Pretend the $20 million is guaranteed, and if anything will increase slightly over time.

What problems could be significantly improved for $20 million?

(I am dreaming of winning the $1.55 billion Powerball drawling. Then taking the lumpsum, posting taxes, investing, and spending 4% each and every year. I understand that the actual may be more, or less than the started amount.)

  • neptune@dmv.social
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    1 year ago

    Start a charity foundation, but pay poor people in your community to lead it, instead of local millionaires.

  • room_raccoon@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I would get a really nice house with a big fancy kitchen and then continue being a hermit, except I’d do a lot more drugs

  • Dandroid@dandroid.app
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    1 year ago

    If I came into an unspendable amount of cash, I would make it my full time job to research things to donate to. Charities, or any charitable organizations, medical research, housing the homeless, feeding/infrastructure/sanitation for poor countries, open source projects, etc. But I don’t want to donate to just anyone. I don’t want to donate to those shitty fake charities that use their donations to line the pockets of their top people. That’s why I would spend a considerabe amount of time researching these groups.

    The way I see it, after I buy all the things I want, a house, a fancy car, etc. I couldn’t possibly spend more than $1M a year on my family. That gives me $19M a year to donate. I don’t really care to keep a cent more.

    • MNByChoice@midwest.socialOP
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      1 year ago

      You are probably spot-on. While I am able to do some things, a charity that is already doing things will likely be better at it.

  • BeefPiano@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago
    • UBI for people who are currently unhoused. This is proven to increase the economic prosperity of the entire region, leads to better outcomes than shelters, and is cheaper than current homelessness support systems.
    • Buy medical debt. You can clear someone’s $150,000 debt for like $200.
  • MNByChoice@midwest.socialOP
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    1 year ago

    $20 million is a lot, but not an infinite amount. As the cash flow is close to guaranteed, one could get into long term projects and hire staff.

    Paying total compensation of $100K, one could hope ~200 people. No money left for offices though.

    I would consider increasing the local standard of living by buying a few minimum wage type businesses and over paying a little, ~5%. I would hope that this causes an employee shortage and increases wages. Continue raising wages at a rate the other businesses can keep up with. My reasoning is that I can only hire so many people, but increasing the prevalent wages will benefit far more people.

    I also think I could open a at-cost medical clinic. I don’t know what that would cost, but I bet someone will tell me really quickly once I have the money.

    I don’t think I would have the money to:

    • Set up a new bus system.
    • Setup district heating for a town

    I feel like I am playing “small ball” and not grasping the opportunities.

  • PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    I’d donate a quarter for 4 years to my city to create a biking network, with some smaller portion donated after the 4 years for maintenance.

    I’d almost certainly help the local schools get up to date teaching materials and try to supplement their income by literally just gifting them money. There’s only around 1000 teachers in my city, so it wouldn’t be too hard to do that.

    Obviously myself a senator and representative.

    Then idk. Get a personal chef and personal trainer?

    • MNByChoice@midwest.socialOP
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      1 year ago

      Giving to the teachers is great. I had looked up my school system’s budget and got discouraged, but a few 10’s of thousands each as gifts to the teachers and staff is more affordable.

  • qooqie@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    How I always imagined it was I would live a nice middle class life with no worries for bills and shit. Then with the rest of the 19.7 million or so I would run a non-profit charity for people in locations that are unable to receive potentially life saving medications or treatments. Think abortions in the US as a major one, I’d want to help women get to a state they can safely get an abortion and then help them protect that info. Abortion bans are a classist issue, rich won’t be affected and they’re the ones who generally vote for this shit. But yeah that’s my dream, eventually I’d hope to get enough funding or money to expand that to a world wide endeavor with my own hospitals setup in regions where I can offer help the best and guarantee info protection.

  • oʍʇǝuoǝnu@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    After taking care of myself, friends and family, and what not I would start acquiring land that I would donate to my community for affordable housing and other community projects with the condition that I get to name everything built on it. All streets, schools, libraries, etc will be named by me.

  • SuperSpruce@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Quit work and take lighter loads in school.

    Buy a nice house in Maine right on the water.

    Buy a supercar, and all the motorcycles I could ever want.

    Go on crazy adventures like an Appalachian trail thru-hike.

    All this would be less than 10% of my yearly income. The other 90% would go to charity, helping the homeless and bolstering free and open source software.

  • ChiwaWithMujicanoHat@mujico.org
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    1 year ago

    I’d go to universities all over the world and ask teachers and students to show me their projects and ideas to help society. There are some incredibly smart people out there that could change the world if we helped them.

  • bubbalu [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I was gonna say, take my boyfriend to fine dining restaurants and fun shows every week, but even assuming we took a $400 each way flight and stayed at a $500 hotel and paid $200 a plate and $75 a show, that still comes out to just $150,000 a year.

    • June@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Those are def rookie numbers for the flights, hotels, dinners, and shows. X20 those and you’re in millionaire spending territory.

  • cosecantphi [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Pay off my debt, buy a modest home, go back to school, never work a shit job for minimum wage ever again.

    But I don’t need anywhere near 20,000,000 dollars a year to do that.

    After some large donations to communist organizations, I’d put the remaining few million per year into buying commercial slots on every major TV network in the US. Then I’d create Jury Nullification PSAs and blast them over the airways continuously until the message sinks in universally that juries are under no obligation at all to respect the laws currently grinding marginalized people into dust.

  • PlasmaDistortion@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I would identify people in need that are renting a home and taking good care of it. Then I would buy the home and sell it to them for $1.

    • LastYearsPumpkin@feddit.ch
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      1 year ago

      I know this is pie in the sky, but look into how habitat for humanity does this. You would be causing a lot of trouble for those families.

      Tax burdens for the purchase, because you’re essentially giving them a lot of money. Kind of like how the people Opera gave cars to couldn’t always afford the taxes and ended up having to sell the car.

      Also, predatory lenders look for people in that situation and trick them into getting loans on the house to get “free” cash from the equity and then the people just immediately lose their house and end up in the same place.

      There are ways to protect them from all of the above, just need a little more than just “give house to good people”

      • Bizarroland@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Yeah it’s probably smarter to purchase the homes under a trust and then rent them to low-income people for the cost of owning the home.

        The stuff you can’t escape.

        The property taxes. The insurance. Things like that.

        Throw in a maintenance fund, broken down into a group fund average with a company on retainer and the salary of three people to manage and maintain all of the properties, collect the minimal rent, manage tenants paperwork and tax reporting and maintenance requests, all the hassle work so that you don’t have to.

        Depending on where you are even 5 million a year worth of homes could be anywhere between 10 and 50 houses every single year added to the group.

        And depending where you are and how that works out that would mean home rental prices somewhere in the $400 to $900 a month price, well below the market average, and well below what these poor people would have to spend to maintain the housing and the associated taxes and insurance fees anyway.

        No surprise $15,000 roof jobs. No surprise $5,000 HVAC jobs. No surprise $800 dishwasher replacements.

        You could probably also work out a deal with a maintenance company or a contractor who is on board with doing this kind of work for charities sake and pass the savings on to your renters.

        All of that maintained and optimized by a fairly simple payment, and the only downside to that is that it would not directly boost the renters wealth via property value increase.

        If you then put say like a 5-year cap on how long somebody could rent your property at cost (extending that optionally until their youngest kid turns 21), then that should givethe renters plenty enough time to sort out their financial situations and to accumulate wealth to purchase their own homes or to get themselves into a better position in life, and then you could pass that savings onto the next person.

        If you wanted to help these people build their wealth then you could also do something like sell the houses when they move out and give them the value increase after taxes that the house accumulated, or considering that we’re in a bit of a housing bubble right now you could also tack on an extra $100 or $200 a month to their rental payments and then refund that money plus any interests that it generated along with any maintenance fee overages that their payments have accumulated during their stay.

        The former is a little more risky but could result in a larger payout for your tenants, and the latter costs more for your tenants but how many people get to leave a 5-year rental agreement with a bonus $10,000 to put towards their own house?

  • tooclose104@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    All mine and my family debts paid. Immediate and extended. Friends too. Then a life of leisure followed by paying the debts of the strangers I meet along the way.

    • pokexpert30@lemmy.pussthecat.org
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      1 year ago

      That first parts is the best way to get harassed to hell and back. You don’t really want to give money to everyone, they’ll come back to beg some more, and get angry/violent/dangerous when you won’t anymore.

      • tooclose104@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        There’s the magic of not giving a shit after. But good point, it’s entirely possible to do this to some extent as an anonymous benefactor. And at $20mil annually guaranteed income I could always hire someone to do it for me.

        Also, I’d be buying remote wilderness and building a self sustaining off grid homestead and not telling most people how to find me. I don’t like visitors.