Is a million dollars not a lot of money in this age?

I just recently had this conversation with my girlfriend who thinks and says that a million dollars is not a lot of money now.

But I disagree with her because I think a million dollars is life changing money for some people including myself. Now I told her that yeah if you live within your means with a million dollars then it could definitely be a lot of money for someone. Don’t go out and try to buy a mansion, Lamborghinis or Ferraris or even a 100 foot yacht. I live in Texas where it seems like the money could go longer than in other parts of the country.

But I guess I ask if other people think a million dollars is a lot of money? Or maybe now considering inflation and the rising cost of everything maybe it’s not a lot of money now?

in Moneyby Enemysquad

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1mo

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markhughesfilms

1mo

Yes, you are correct that $1 million is a lot of money, and is also life-changing. Consider that if you put $1 million into the S&P 500 you'd make anywhere from $100-200,000 per year just off the interest, in some recent years as much as about $250,000 in fact.

So, is $100-200,000 per year income a decent amount of money? Would adding that amount to the rest of your income change your life? Of course it would, for the vast majority of us, even those who have a good household income already. You'd have to make almost *half-a-million salary* per year ALREADY before it's less than doubling your income, which any reasonable person would have to consider life-changing at the very least. And $500,000 per year is the amount only 1.8% of the U.S. population tops, for perspective.

With $1 million you could save hundreds if not thousands of children's lives by donating it to the What If? Foundation or Doctors Without Borders or other such organizations. And anyone telling you THAT isn't life-changing needs to have their head examined.

Likewise, with $1 million you could make a low-budget 90 minute horror film -- if it's $500,000 budget, then you can spend the other $500,000 renting about 5 movie theater screens in every state in the USA , and screen your movie for a week on each of those 5 theater screens, in every single state. That's just doing it straight out of pocket at market rates, so you could obviously do better with a distribution deal etc but just straight up making a movie and distributing it nationwide would be pretty amazing and life-changing..

Or make a low-budget animated miniseries/1st season of a show. Or take an incredible dream vacation. If you are simply going to spend all of it instead of investing or anything at all, you could just take a $10,000 week-long vacation every year for the next 100 years.

Now imagine if you just work a part-time job at a weed store, maybe 20 hours per week, in a state where minimum wage is at least $10/hr. You'd make $10,000 per year that way, in addition to what you could make with that money in the bank earning you $100-200,000 interest every year and you're adding the $10,000 back each year that you spend on taking a fabulous $10,000 one-week vacation.

That's all just if you don't even bother investing in Netflix and AMD stock where over the long haul you'll make a shitload more money hahaha -- not stock advice, I'm not an expert or anything blah blah just a joke about stock that's kind of overtly an easy call. The point is, with very little work (using an AI that tracks real-time news and investment data and stock market info for example) you can set up investments that earn you $250,000 consistently, if not much more, so you'd be able to essentially do whatever you want at that point.

People say $1 million isn't life changing because most folks know they'd lose it all or waste it all and feel foolish later, so I think they tend to diminish the value of it to mitigate their sense of awareness of that truth. Pure dime-store psychology, obviously.

markhughesfilms

1mo

With $1 million you can buy a great house in somewhere like Metro Detroit with nice homes at shockingly affordable prices, and still have $800,000-900,000 in the bank afterward, I swear to god. So you could get a great house, buy a really great car, and *still* have at least $750-850,000 left over to generate you a healthy $85-150,000 per year in interest, to which you could work the part-time job at a weed store to add another $10,000 for that 2-week vacation you take every year (plus hey a nice discount on weed if that's your thing).

Who would say owning a nice big house and a great new car while earning in the neighborhood of six figures per year and having a big expensive 2-week vacation every year isn't "life-changing?" A lot of this is just stuff that comes from having experience and knowing what to look for, where to look (and not to look), and so on. But this is a doable lifestyle on that budget for sure, so if someone offers you $1 million, my hot take is "take it!"