Retiring is for wimps! I'd expand! That way I could make more billions and take over the world!!

I think I'd actually go the other way and downsize...get rid of the house and cars, and find a nice little apartment that doesn't need maintenance. Less responsibility.

Then I could travel without worries about keeping the lawn mowed, and I could lease a snazzy new car and not worry about driving it in the winter (can you get snow tires for Ferraris? )

In all seriousness here, the first thing that I would do is set up about 5 different offshore accounts each with about 2 mil in each. Just in case everything else goes to pot, I want to make sure that I can still do nothing for the rest of my life.

Second, I would set it up so that the money would just replenish itself, and I would never have to work again. Figure that I would want a $200,000 annual income from the interest/dividends/other earnings, which should be very easy with $900,000,000. The additional interest/dividends/other earnings (after I take my 0.02% annually) would be reinvested so that each of my kids could do the same--although they wouldn't know about it until after they have graduated college. This goes for all but 90 mil of it.

Third, I would put in my two weeks.

Fourth, I start a company doing something with $1 mil. Just a front for my income. Pay folks to run the whole thing, and I'd play with cars/computers/guitars/my girlfriend the whole time. Maybe franchise a McD's, I probably wouldn't have to do anything but have an office offsite.

Fifth: With 89 mil that is left: 2 mil to my parents. 2 to my girlfriends parents. 1 to throw an awesome wedding for the gf and I. 1 mil to each of my brothers, but it would be set up so that they can't touch it until retirement. About 10 mil donated to the local sports car club. 10 mil donated for another ice rink here in town. 10 mil each to MS and various cancer research, 5 mil to ADA and JDRF, as well as other various charities--maybe 50mil total to charity. 10 mil for houses in Chicago, Central IL, UP, Southern Indiana, Texas, VA, Maine, Oregon, and maybe some out of the country. Then the rest would get blown on guitars, cars, boats, and sharks with lasers on their heads.

Aside from money management related stuff:

1. Buy land and build house (more like compound) in a nice "rural-ish but not too far from city" area, w/ 20-car garage plus workshop and large paved area for reconfigurable track

2. Buy gifts for family and friends, what's a few million here and there?

3. Buy cars. All with excellent safety because my life is too good to risk now.

4. Spend my time inventing things for fun. I think I'd start with some kit cars, and a line of FLOSS-friendly gadgets - the anti-Apple (could I name my company Orange? I'm sure I could buy the rights to it).

5. Start some nonprofits to make the world better instead of worse for a change, including a shadowy conspiracy to get all money out of politics worldwide. Billionaire Adrian could be my arch-nemesis

Edit: I realize I didn't add "quit my job," but if that's not implied in receiving the billion dollars, it should be in point #4.

stuart in mn wrote: I think I'd actually go the other way and downsize...get rid of the house and cars, and find a nice little apartment that doesn't need maintenance. Less responsibility. Then I could travel without worries about keeping the lawn mowed, and I could lease a snazzy new car and not worry about driving it in the winter (can you get snow tires for Ferraris? )

We're talking about a BILLION dollars. you can pay someone to keep it maintained! That's what I'm doing.

nderwater wrote: You can spend a million pretty quickly, but billion with a B puts you in a whole different league. My coworkers specialize in managing the money of the rich and super rich. First thing I'd do is hit one up to set me up with financial strategy that mitigates the worst of the tax liabilities. Next up would be a rigorous financial plan, including setting up trusts to take care of the rest of my family. Then would come the big family decisions to improve our quality of life - What's most important to us? What would we like to do with our lives? Where would we like to live? The rest of the stuff - houses and cars and travel and events and memberships are details that come after the big decisions are made. My personal dreams: - Become a licensed club racer, complete at least a season of racing - Secure a driving season with a team in a pro sprint series - Secure a season with a team in a pro endurance series - Eventually race at Le Mans

You read my mind. X2

Conquest351 wrote: I see one common trait in all these posts which makes me love you guys even more. You all want to pay off family and friends debts and do good in the community. This is why I like you guys so damn much.

Not me, those people are a bunch of mooches. Let them get their own imaginary billions!

1. The usual "Hire lawyers/accountants to guard money from evil governments". I'm rich now. Remove those pesky "Debt" things from close friends and relatives.

2. Keep an eye out to make more. One Billion isn't going to last forever.

3. Buy mountain top hideaway, or two.

4 Buy expensive sports cars. Learn to drift same.

Oh, and interfere in local politics until I get run off.

1. Quit the job. Give notice? Phooey. They wouldn't hesitate to lay me off if they wanted to, so screw 'em.
2. Buy a house in the mountains in Colorado. Never. Ever. Ever see Houston again.
3. Hire my brother for security at a ridiculously high wage.
4. Hire my best friend at a ridiculously high wage to maintain my growing fleet vintage automobiles and modern sportscars.
5. Hire a team of rogue SAS and SpecOps operatives to kidnap Patrick Dempsey and enlist a secret team of brilliant scientists to transfer my brain into his body (that would take care of lot of other things on a longer list, including driving LeMans).

I see that "pay off debts" is #1 for most people, but not for me. I mean, you want to own the crappy car, house and stuff that you have now? Why? You can afford much better now! Let the bank have my Kia, I will be rolling in a new 918 Spider!

1. Buy a nice, but not obnoxious, house on lots of property with a Jay-Leno style warehouse/workshop out back.
2. Buy every car project that I ever dreamed about. Anyone with means can have a Ferrari FF right? But how many people have a twin-turbo Intrepid R/T or a 1000HP notchback Mustang?
3. Help others. (not defining that exactly, but I know what I would do)
4. Legal stuff to make kids and grandkids happy for a long time.
5. The wife decides the rest. I'm sure she'll grab a house and want to travel.

Buy Detroit. Drive around in a souped up F150 Raptor, jumping and running into everything, getting all Megatron all over everywhere. Have dinner with some hot porn star ladies in an exotic locale. Retire to the wilderness of Canada. Become a wolf.

Eat some chicken strips, turn into a jet, bomb the russians and fly into the sun.....

Most of that song is far from PC.

You know what I'd do if I had a billion dollars? 2000 chicks at the same time.

Realistically, pay the family's and friends' stuff off, buy a fricking compound, become a huge financial partner with VIR, Get my pilot's license, then spend the rest of my days playing with cars, planes, and guns.

5 chicks at the same time.

Edit: berkeley! Beat me to it by 5 minutes.

Here's what I'd do...

1 - Quit job. Duh.

2 - Legal financial crap to insure my moneys will always be there and trusts for friends and family.

3 - Buy 650-1000 acres and build the Hamilton Racing Complex of Central Texas with huge paddock and about 10 homes for family and friends in a nice neighborhood setting of small acreage homesites with hired help for maintaining the whole place. All runnning off grid with solar and wind.

4 - Do random nice things like give local dealerships $10k to provide a car to a family in need, buy random peoples groceries at the store, etc.

5 - Buy all the cars I ever wanted and build the ones that don't exist. The weirdest most badass things imaginable would come out of the paddock and shop where I'd have a staff of mad geniuses building chassis and engines for me.

Put it in an investment as Adrian said in #1 & 2, buy my son and DIL a house.

Travel.

Mrs. 914 always wanted to see Spain and Italy.

Billionaire? I'd buy about 800acres next to our current farm and build a "Track of Dreams" so to say.......If you build it, they will race....right?

1. Pay off debt, pay off closest loved one debt
2. Buy home in remote location with large garage
3. Fill said garage with numerous odd GRM vehicle
4. Travel
5. Buy the rights to all reality shows and cancel them all.

Bobzilla wrote:

stuart in mn wrote: I think I'd actually go the other way and downsize...get rid of the house and cars, and find a nice little apartment that doesn't need maintenance. Less responsibility. Then I could travel without worries about keeping the lawn mowed, and I could lease a snazzy new car and not worry about driving it in the winter (can you get snow tires for Ferraris?

We're talking about a BILLION dollars. you can pay someone to keep it maintained! That's what I'm doing.

Yeah, but that means having to worry about paying employees and all that. I want to reduce my level of responsibility to zero.

MA$$hole wrote: Buy the rights to all reality shows and cancel them all.

I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Give away $990,000,000.

Seems like we've done something like this before, but...

1. Pay off debts & mortgage(s)- mine and immediate and extended family (likely including those of my GF's)
2. Start a non-profit, charity/subsidized auto garage to repair the cars of those who would normally be too poor to afford it but who need those vehicles to get to and from work and support their families. Would also do non-subsidized work at slightly higher-than-average prices with the extra going towards offsetting the subsidized work. Require those whose cars are repaired at a reduced rate to go through a short, simple class on basic automotive preventative maintenance like checking fluids and such to try and keep them from needing to have more work done for as long as possible. Also have an apprentice program for a few people at at time to learn to be auto mechanics to they can get better-paying jobs. In addition to repairing cars, always have a few that have been bought cheap and are being fixed up and sold at-cost to those whose cars aren't fixable. Basically, a way for me to work on cars to my heart's desire and help people at the same time.
3. Buy a couple acres a bit out of town and build our dream house & a really nice garage.
4. Take remainder of money and find a solid way to invest it to generate the most income from interest to live off of and to help fund the garage.
5. Spend the rest of my life having fun working on cars and doing all the fun driving and racing things I'd never usually have been able to do (and making sure the GF and any kids had a good time too).

1 Quit 2 Pay off all debt, and do the charity, family, church stuff with money 3 Buy where we want to live and build what we want there 4 Visit Financial guru so I don't have to think about things 5 See if I can buy race track to own and operate

With all that the investment for the financial guru should still have close to $500,000,000. $250,000,000 at worse.

Hopefully not this!

stuart in mn wrote: I think I'd actually go the other way and downsize...get rid of the house and cars, and find a nice little apartment that doesn't need maintenance. Less responsibility. Then I could travel without worries about keeping the lawn mowed, and I could lease a snazzy new car and not worry about driving it in the winter (can you get snow tires for Ferraris? )

Tire Rack has em for R8's....

As far as my list

• Pay someone else to make my damn list.
• Koenigsegg CCXR
• PINBALL MACHINES
• Monster Truck
• Big house, all the land, and things to drive on it
• State of the art machine shop
• Screw my family.
• Get the wife the boob job she's always wanted (seriously, she wants em reduced....)