If I had a million dollars…

[brigid]

Mirrored from Words, words, words, art..

Let’s play a hypothetical game.

You find a bag on your lawn or in your hallway or something. Inside is bundles of cash totaling about a million dollars. They don’t seem to be marked.

What do you do?

Do you call the police or take out an ad asking for someone to claim the money?

Do you contact the IRS to claim/pay taxes on your windfall?

Do you keep it secret?

If you keep it secret, what do you do? How do you spend it without attracting attention to yourself? How do you keep your money safe? How do you keep YOURSELF safe?

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Comments

[niqaeli]

I call the cops because I'm concerned as hell about whatever the fuck went down that led to randomly a million dollars in unmarked bills that I am now associated with.

I'm paranoid about that kind of shit, though. To much true crime, fake crime, and genre television, possible, but I just wouldn't want to get caught in any kind of crossfire.

If someone GAVE me a million dollars, that would be a little different... >_>;

[pinesandmaples]

I'm curious and a hypothetical quadjillionaire. So I saw you walking along, decided I liked your shoes/glasses/hairstyle/something and handed you a neat basket of bills that totaled a cool mil. It's free, it's legal, and it is of non-dubious origins. (I made most of my money in the light fixture industry. The rest of it came from selling doorknobs.) Where does that million go?

(For what it's worth, I agree about getting in touch with people who are in charge, re: the front yard money.)

[niqaeli]

Pays off the house and consumer debt and the rest goes into investments. Investments being, aside from actual financial investments, going to medical school and opening the spa resort of my dreams (designed to be accessible from the ground up in as many ways as possible).

I, um, have daydreamt about what I'd do with huge lottery winnings kind of a lot. And that's the super-boiled down version! *g*

[pinesandmaples]

Those sound like great plans! I would probably move into your spa and live there with cucumbers over my eyes and really good-looking skin for the rest of my life.

[brigid]

So you'd report it to the IRS? Or do it on the downlow?

And you made an awesome point about the danger!

[niqaeli]

Oh, I'd report it. If there's one thing you don't do, it's fuck with the IRS.

I've got a great-uncle who lost a beautiful property and a lot of money to tax evasion. The IRS is evil but you don't fuck with them. >_>;

[cleverthylacine]

Yeah, no, you report that shit.

[cleverthylacine]

If you turned it over to the cops and it wasn't evidence, would you ever see it again?

[cleverthylacine]

If I got a million bucks from some unknown source under circumstances that didn't lead me to think I would from heretofore be in danger of dying of lead poisoning (a single bolus directly to the head or chest)...?

First I'd get the taxes sorted.
Then I'd pay all my debts.
Then I'd see what was left and talk to an accountant.

For sure, I'd:

* move to a better flat
* go back to school (art school! fashion design!)
* invest whatever I didn't need.

Whether I would invest it for growth or income would depend upon how much was left, but you can be sure that with less than a million I'd put it aside to either add to my yearly income or my retirement fund.

I would probably make some charitable contributions, but not too much; my first concern would be eliminating the possibility of needing charitable contributions myself.

If I got TEN million dollars, I'd probably donate 10% of the effective windfall once I'd cleared out all my debts and taxes.

Also, I'd buy more lolita. But not too much more, because I'd have more time to make it.