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Talking Meme: I won the lottery! Whoo!
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northernwalker asked: You've just won the lottery! It's a multi-million dollar win. What are the first three things you'd buy? Would you quit your job/move/make other drastic life changes? Ooooh, this is actually a very hard question about my job. See, I love my job, I really do--every semester brings new and interesting challenges and frustrations, and it never gets boring. However, in recent years the workload has been slowly accumulating until this year I'm finding it quite hard to keep up with work and fandom, and that's galling. I could potentially drop to a different contract with fewer committee responsibilities, but...then I'd lose my office, and I do love to have an office (with walls and a door! All those years ago I thought Les Nesman of WKRP in Cincinnati was an oddball, but now I realize walls and a door are invaluable at the workplace...my God, I have become Les Nesman).
That said, my choices for what I would purchase with my lottery winnings are clear:
1. College educations for my nieces
2. A personal secretary, bilingual in Japanese and English, to do my paperwork and keep track of my deadlines. *luxurious sigh*
The rest would probably go into a retirement fund, to be honest! I am both boring and paranoid (oh no, I am Les Nesman...)
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tbh I'd probably shove 2/3 into the bank to earn interest and to stop me from being tempted to spend all of it. Then the remaining 1/3 I'd split between necessities and material things that make me happy. Depending on how big the prize amount is, maybe I'd be less stressed about having a high-paying job/be more comfortable with pursuing lower-paying but leaves-me-with-more-free-time jobs.
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(Money can't buy happiness, but it surely can help get rid of obstacles to happiness!)
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But yeah, the thought of someone to do the boring bits sounds so darn good. Formatting and uploading stories, yeah, that'd be awesome! :D
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Meanwhile, I would immediately pay off all my debt. My student loan debt is the biggest, but Tal and I have also accumulated the requisite amount of surviving young couple credit card debt, and I have library fines. I'd take care of it all - and in the same umbrella I would pay off all my parents' debts and set aside a survival fund for them so that they could move and stop working (or mom could keep her low-paying dream job) if they budget well.
Then, I'd pay for Tal and mine's transition procedures. I include in this budget wardrobe expenses since I still have a closet full of mostly skirts and dresses.
Next, I would buy a house and pay for the various utilities for as many years in advance as the companies would allow me to - including and especially internet.
After that, I'd set the rest aside to be paid to me very, very gradually, in small sums, like a paycheck. I don't trust myself to not 'spend it all in one place', so if there was anything left after all those huge expenses I would live off it, portioned out so I could not splurge it all away.
And if, after doing all that, there's any left over, I'd start buying lots and LOTS of presents for friends.
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Yeah, exactly! My job is really specialized and doing things I love--and in my experience, having lots of free time does not actually make me more productive with my hobbies, so I figure I might as well keep it. :)
My student loan debt is the biggest, but Tal and I have also accumulated the requisite amount of surviving young couple credit card debt, and I have library fines. I'd take care of it all - and in the same umbrella I would pay off all my parents' debts and set aside a survival fund for them so that they could move and stop working (or mom could keep her low-paying dream job) if they budget well.
Getting a whole family out of debt sounds fantastic! I mean, what could be better?
Next, I would buy a house and pay for the various utilities for as many years in advance as the companies would allow me to - including and especially internet.
Paying for utilities in advance sounds brilliant! I wonder if you can do something like "Here's 30,000 dollars, please just take it and draw off it when I get a bill." Probably not, but it's a great idea...
Presents for friends would be there too, I think! It would be nice to have a sort of fund where if someone expressed a yearning for something you could just pop up and give it to them...
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I FEEL YOUR PAIN
walls and a door are invaluable at the workplace
Agreed. I worked a job for the last one and a half years where we were all together in a big room and you had no privacy whatsoever at your workplace. Very seldom I worked at the one station where you had your own little room. It was so relaxing! I've always known I am a person who needs their place to retreat and work in peace. This job just brought that home to me very clearly.
Mmh personal secretary, yes that would be lovely. I think I'd use some of the money to travel to far away places which I can't afford (NZ, Japan, South-east Asia). But yep retirement fund sounds sensible.
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Having the ability to snag some time and space for myself is really important! And travel, yessss. My problem is I'm not really certain how our retirement plan here works--the details are just too hard to figure out, I know it's supposed to be enough to live on eventually, but--! So putting money aside is very important...