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How long could you stretch 1 million dollars? How many years?

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I would get a decent house pay cash. Maybe some new cars, not luxury. Give some to my folks. Save rest for rain day, and keep working as I do.
 
1) Pay off all debt

2) Buy house (about half a million range)

3) Invest all the remaining but $20,000

4) Go to Vegas and spend $20,000 in one week

5) Keep on working
 
My grandfather got 400.000 euros in a lawsuit with his slumlord landlord (they sealed off the fire exit of the apartment block he lived in lol)
he died <2 years later (complications in a heart surgery) so he never got to enjoy it

He didn't spend it on anything, kept living in the same appartment block and he just bought himself some basic new furniture bought better food and gave the rest (almost all of it) to his daughter , who in turn bought an apartment with it and put the rest in the bank.

My mom read through his diary after he died and he wrote something along the lines of 'I have all this money but I'm unhappy all the same, I want to die' (he used to be a wifebeating alcoholic)

The money didn't make him happy, I'm just grateful there's no drama in the family over his inheritance

edit: I forgot
he actually used to be quite rich, he owned several appartments and a business but he got into debt (not sure how never got the details it was before I was born) and lost everything
So he was rich before (and poor for a long time after) and was a shitty alcoholic who beat my grandmother back then too,no idea if he was happy in those days.
 
Liquidsnake said:
My parents gave me a condo. I sold the condo for a $200,000 profit. I gave my mom 100k and I deposited about $88,000 after costs into my savings and checking account.

I then quit my job and proceeded to spend it all over the next 8 months. Like I said having worked every day of my life since the age of 16. It was the best 8 months of my life.

Living in a nice place, women, clothes, vacations. But I was very stupid and careless.

Example: I bought that stupid Samsung Matrix phone off ebay for $1,000 dollars. Why?

Because I wanted it. It was a garbage phone anyways. I bought a $2,200 dollar HD TV CRT 52 inch. One of the first of its kind. Dumb stuff like that.
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Should be in OP.
 
If I lived as a hermit and browsed GAF for the rest of my life: $10 a day for food, and $500 monthly to rent a small place with utilities included, $3650 + 6000 = $9650 per year.

I guess I could live 100 years, the interest on the portion I don't spend can probably cover inflation. 100 Years of GAF!
 
I'd get double what I earn monthly in interest if I put it in a savings account. That alone would last my entire lifetime, without even going for better investments.
 
I could make it last the rest of my life if I wanted to. I have managed to make a little amount of money last for years before. The question is though, would I want to? Probably not. I only get concerned with money when it starts getting low. With 1 million in the bank, it would seem like I always have the money for anything.
 
With my current lifestyle? 40 years, easily (not counting inflation of course). Which is a little over 2 grand. And since my monthly expenses at the moment (rent, food, insurances, intuition, etc.) are 1000 tops, that means I'd have 1000 left to spend. Moooore than enough for me.
 
The rest of my life, with college money left over for my offspring. If I can stretch $25 every two weeks like I did back in college, I know I can stretch 1,000,000 for the rest of my life


unless my wife spends it all :P
 
As a digital nomad that lives in the cheaper places of the world, I could live the rest of my life on that extremely comfortably. Monthly expenses are less than $2000, so do the math! $24,000 a year plus travel to a new country every few months = hardly putting a dent in that mil.
 
1 million. 20+ years if I don't work and just live off of it. Move somewhere with decent living standards, where I can comfortably live off of 50k a year. Rent, utilities, food, entertainment, etc. Put most of it in various safe investments, high interest savings accounts, that will net me more years worth of cash. So yeah easy 20 years easily, if not a lot more. Granted that's all on my own, no wife, no kids which I would want.
 
So many posters in here are failing to consider inflation... I mean, maybe you live in one of the parts of the world with deflation, but I'd say that's unlikely.

Anyway, I'd just keep doing what I'm already doing. I'd take out $25,000 of that for fun money and then just invest the rest into a few low-expense mutual funds that track the bond market, US stock market, and international stock markets. Then, since I'm only 25, if I want to retire in 10-15 years I could do so with significant ease, especially since I'd continue to work between now and then.
 
My current cost of living is about $20,000 a year.

I could make a million last the rest of my life if I needed to, assuming prices didn't skyrocket, and other financial nuances.
 
Im having a hard time answering this question when I start thinking that If I wasnt working, I would probably be spending WAY more money than I do right now.

I mean, playing videogames all day would be cool for a bit but soon enough I would start looking for other kinds of distraction, each one probably more expensive than the last.
 
zephervack said:
Im having a hard time answering this question when I start thinking that If I wasnt working, I would probably be spending WAY more money than I do right now.

I mean, playing videogames all day would be cool for a bit but soon enough I would start looking for other kinds of distraction, each one probably more expensive than the last.
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I can tell you from experience, that extra time on your hands= spending more.
 
I probably set aside maybe 10k for emergency money, 5k for vacation trip and expenses, an the rest I would invest in Beanie Babies and Cabbage Patch Kids.

So I would in turn turn a million dollars into infinite dollars.
 
I don't see me blowing it all very quickly if I had that much money. I'd probably just use it to pay for uni and stuff and put the rest in a savings account.
 
If I had 1 million dollars, I'd work to making that 1 million get me more money.

If I can't then living at the current way of living, I can stretch it to about....20 years.
 
I'm not a big spender (my idea of "splurge" is a $2000 computer), so I would probably be able to live comfortably with it for a very long time. Possibly the rest of my life.

Most of it would go into a house, and then the rest would be saved up for investments and the like. I MIGHT be able to live off the returns from the money alone. I would probably move from a full-time job to a part-time job, as no income and nothing to do would probably make me useless.
 
I'd pay off my house (about $100k to go) then invest in a mix of stock and bond index funds. With my current retirement savings and what I'd save shortly after, I'd be able to retire for life in just a few years and live off of ~$80k/year.
 
A million wouldn't last that long without working.

500k on home
350k on home to rent for 2200 a month.
40k pay off student loan debt.
50k on two cars for 10 years
90k split between savings and stock/investments.


The 2200 a month would be taxed as income, however it would be the only income. So with a child and a wife I would assume most taxes would come back at end of year. 800 a month would go to property tax for the above homes though. 700 on food a month for a family. Gas etc etc. Hopefully healthcare could be subsidized.

That 90k would slowly start to dwindle.


Now if I decided to leave California then I could probably extend this out further. 1 million would ensure early retirement though.
 
I've thought about this before:

Right now my family's monthly expenses come out to approx. $2000. So at my current expenses I could live off of 1 mil for 41 years. Obviously with inflation and costs of living going up each year I'm sure after adjustments it would be something like 30 years, but if I could do it for 20 years and not have to worry about working full-time and also get to enjoy a few trips here and there... well, that would be mighty fine.
 
Year 1. Open a high interest savings account. Pay off all debts. Invest some.Buy a good house to rent out.

Year 2.Do some home improvement on my current house.

Work another 10 years to build savings and make more investments.

Year 10. Rent out my current house......Maybe retire.
 
ZackieChan said:
As a digital nomad that lives in the cheaper places of the world, I could live the rest of my life on that extremely comfortably. Monthly expenses are less than $2000, so do the math! $24,000 a year plus travel to a new country every few months = hardly putting a dent in that mil.
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I've been working towards this after seeing your thread. Where are you now? I've read that doing visa runs on Thailand got harder recently. And all that stuff about the protests. Shame since every digital nomad recommends Chiang Mai.
 
Easy.. rest of my liiiiiffffeeee (assuming I die of old age ...)

Step 1- put that shit in an account that has some good interest on it.
Step 2 (here's the hard part ..)- DON'T touch it for the next year. Just work like normal and hope nothing comes up that requires a shit ton of money.
Step 3- Limit my budget for the next year to how ever much interest I'm awarded. I can find myself a nice place outside of the US that allows me to live on a $50-100 grand a year budget (I would leave the US BTW, not to make things cheaper but for personal reasons).
Step 4- Save wut I don't use.

That way in the future I will have money to upgrade living spaces for a family or play around with investments. I would keep working anyways so really it's more like having a safety net and expendable cash that I nibble on until I'm ready to leave the work force all together.
 
I get by with 30k/year. If I could totally pay off all my debts so I don't have to pay interest, that 30k/year could go pretty damn far.

Assuming no medical emergency or anything else that would totally drain the cash, I could get by for a good 40+ years. I would definitely stretch the 1 million long enough so I would never have to work as long as I didn't want to. I don't need a lot of money to live off of, I would certainly enjoy it though.

Fenderputty said:
A million wouldn't last that long without working.

500k on home
350k on home to rent for 2200 a month.
40k pay off student loan debt.
50k on two cars for 10 years
90k split between savings and stock/investments.


The 2200 a month would be taxed as income, however it would be the only income. So with a child and a wife I would assume most taxes would come back at end of year. 800 a month would go to property tax for the above homes though. 700 on food a month for a family. Gas etc etc. Hopefully healthcare could be subsidized.

That 90k would slowly start to dwindle.


Now if I decided to leave California then I could probably extend this out further. 1 million would ensure early retirement though.
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Yeah, if you want to blow most of it on a 500k house. I would look at relocating to some place with a much cheaper standard of living. Depending on the city, you could buy a really nice house for ~150k or so.
 
I'd probably invest into my own businesses right away. Probably wouldnt last me more than a year at best.

But if I invested it into my self, as in buying shit and living it up, probably a few years.
 
Invest. Even with a modest 5%, that's $50,000 a year. 7-10% would be doable, though. Even at 5%, it's enough to pay a small mortgage ($250k) and living expenses.

Would still go to work to live a more comfortable life.
 
Keep 250k in bank for retirement
buy a 450k house
buy a 70k car
give 100k to my family
Buy a 200k vacation house
spend the remaining 30k in raunchy anal barely legal activities
 
Liquidsnake said:
My parents gave me a condo. I sold the condo for a $200,000 profit. I gave my mom 100k and I deposited about $88,000 after costs into my savings and checking account.

I then quit my job and proceeded to spend it all over the next 8 months.
Click to expand...

AZNn1kS.jpg
 
IF we're assuming you get this money tax free and I'm still working, then I would do a few things:

- Pay off my mortgage
- Pay off my auto-loan and my girlfriend's auto-loan
- Pay off my girlfriend's student loans
- Pay off what's remaining on my parent's mortgage
- Pay off what's remaining on my girlfriend's parent's mortgage

That'd leave me about $500k - 600k

I wouldn't change a single thing about my lifestyle, but I would invest almost every dime of what's remaining. I'd expect to turn that back into $1m in some year's time.
 
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