Ask Lemmy

Buy the entire Supreme Court of the United States.

Dunno what I'd do with the other $6.415 billion though. Maybe start buying Congress members?

1. Pay off the remainder on my mortgage.
2. Pay off my parents' mortgage.
3. Buy a new house that is large enough for my family to live comfortably in, without being ostentatious.
4. Give my old home to my in-laws. They could use it.
5. Set up a fund that produces enough interest for me and my family to live off of in perpetuity. $4 million in an account that produces 5.5% interest annually would be $220,000 (pre-tax) every year, which is plenty for our needs.
6. Set up a foundation to help the poor, fund environmental projects, support social justice causes, and so on with all of the rest.

I do not need $6 billion. No one does. I don't want it. It would ruin me. The absolute best thing I could do with it is dedicate the overwhelming majority of it to causes I believe in, rather than hoarding it or buying a bunch of stupid shit.

I'll tell you what I'd do, man. two chicks at the same time. And I think if I had 5 billion pounds I could hook that up, cause chicks dig a dude with money.

Truthfully though I'd hook my family up bigtime for probably the next few hundred years and start hiring experts on how to deal with that kind of basically at least to me infinite money.

I don't know... that would almost be enough to buy property on the outskirts of London

Go back to sleep.

Step one, get an accountant, and lawyer. Things will get complex, and mistakes can result in spending more than you have which isn't the goal. Thus an accountant to watch those numbers and keep me in the black. The big issue is taxes need to be paid so there needs to be enough left over to do that along with pay the accountant, but there will also be weird legal issues that come up.

Second, the money goes to charity. How it gets there will be tricky though.

The IRS looks at large donations and starts to assume I'm trying to dodge taxes by hiring a charity for something I'd do anyway - so my accountant will work with them to figure out what donation levels work for each that I care about. There are also some causes that I consider charity that do not meet the legal definition (often because they are political) and so the donation to them is still taxable (not that I'm trying to dodge taxes, but I'll take advantage of anything that will help causes I care about)

I will set aside some money as a fund for me. However I'll only allow myself to withdraw from it as payment for work done for charity. projects like KDE or FreeBSD can always use more help. There is a summer camp I'll volunteer for once in a while. Habitat for Humanity needs help... The important part is I need to put in 35 hours a week or I don't get money from the fund (I will allow 2 months of vacation and that summer camp will get 80 hours/week when in session which I will bank for more vacation). The important part here is I need to stay busy - doctors tell me sitting around doing nothing when you retire is deadly so I'm not going to do that.

Likely a lot of money will remain after I'm dead, so a trust fund will remain. However the instructions will be to drain the money as fast as possible. I know of several funds remaining from people who died 100+ years ago and the fund is now doing things I'm sure the original would oppose.

Fix the simple problems: hunger, homelessness, education

I'd get a block of houses, not mansions, just 6 small houses where the backyards are all together and make that into a little community where I can get the people I'm closest to into an area with a shared community space in the backyards. That's my expensive one.

Rav4 hybrid. I just want a fuel efficient car I can go camping in.

Set up a trust to make sure that I don't have to work if I don't want to, get to retire.

Then the rest... I'm stuck between which is better, dumping it into becoming a non-profit to get as many homeless people housed as possible, or build into a superpac specifically meant to bring down Citizens United.

Do everything in my power to pass some privacy legislation for Americans, and overturn the Patriot Act. I probably don't have nearly enough since I'd be going up against the biggest corporations in the world.

Make sure I set a few million aside for myself and family. Buy everyone I'm close with a house, and give them a few million each.

If there's anything left, and there probably won't be because I spent it all trying to get Congress to respect our right to privacy, then I'd start helping random struggling people who seem like good people. I suppose I'd form a foundation for that since I wouldn't have the time to help as many people as possible.

Pay off debts, secure a home paid off in full for my family with enough land that we can grow our own food, get new bike, and roam the world surreptitiously helping people.

Yeah, I'm building at least one city from scratch. The big thing is going to be figuring out where.

Call a national account and law firm to set the money up in a way that minimises the amount of tax owed for ongoing years.

Call some wholesale investment fund managers and invest a several hundred mill in each.

Trust funds for the family with liveable stipends. Gets replenished by the wholesale fund dividends.

Finally get my drivers licence sorted and see where the wife wants to visit.

quit my job and go out to eat. real creative i know.

Well, besides the obvious of paying off mortgages and debts which wouldn't even amount to a fraction of that, I'd buy an island to convert into a 24/7 mass paintball (or laser tag or something) warzone experience, like hundreds of people on both sides.

Sell the experience to people, classic Red team vs blue team, stay until you're eliminated, barracks/camps, HQ, command structures, etc. It would be a live streamed competition with commentary, tactics, live go pro cams, everything. Maybe do it in seasons, have leaderboards, MVPs, whatever.

Players that have already been to the island before would be able to advise, or place bets on their accounts or whatever to build up load outs for their next trip.

The goal being a fun live game, exercise, stamina training, whatever, but mostly an outlet for the people in the world that get excited by war with the intention of hopefully reducing that with a safe environment.

I feel like if done correctly, and made as affordable as possible, it could turn into a relatively profitable business. I would then ensure the profits went to charities that provide aid to actual warzones and ensure that the primary message of the theme park is completely anti-war.

Any money leftover that didn't go into that project I would donate and invest in animal welfare and conservation, renewable energy, and tackling the climate crisis.

Build housing that would be rent-to-own. The only qualification would be paying first month’s rent and a deposit, then if you stay for 15 years you own the place. Price it for minimal profit (5-10%) and build/renovate a new set every year.

I'd probably be boring and try to use it to improve the lives of marginalised and impoverished people. Getting hospital waiting times down, improving access to mental health support, give people loans to get on their feet. That sort of thing.

Maybe I could also make a video sharing site to complete with Youtube and force them to make some improvements to remain competitive. But I'm not sure 6 billion will go far enough on that front.

Move to Europe, start a game studio, throw the rest in investments, donate the proceeds to try to reduce homelessness where I currently live.

Shit, that's over 30 billion BRL. On a quick search for comparison, that's more money than several Brazilian states' yearly budget! I really have no fucking clue what I'd do, because I'd want to start going Cities Skyline around.

There's an anime based on this idea. Higashi no Eden

But I would try to raise the quality of life of those in my circle and hopefully others. I like to think ~6 billion is a lot of cash but it won't be enough to help everyone directly. So I would probably need to pick a few issues and start up an charity focused around the ideas of solving issues with censorship, access to the internet and providing a safe haven to oppressed lgbt individuals.

Pay off all my debts and set the rest on fire

And when you go to war they're obligated to go too, possibly even in your place

Setup solar panels with 99% of it then probably die in an orgy of hedonism with the remaining 6 million.

Build a workers coop for lots of types of businesses and then gift them ownership stakes in it after working for 5 years.

Hire a financial advisor and a lawyer. Then donate 4.5 billion to different organizations. I'd keep 500 million for myself to spend on 1 home each for me and my friends, pay off any debt that my parents or my in-laws might have, then put the remainder in a low-risk investment product.

Pay off my debt and fuck off some where nice and quite and live the rest of my days comfortably.

Obviously I'm gonna work out how much to set aside to live comfortably off the interest forever first. That should not require a big percentage of that much money. Get myself a house, make sure my loved ones are set and comfortable too.

Next I'm going to set aside a chunk of it to be completely irresponsible with. I'm gonna get on a train and see all the bits of Europe I want to see, stay in nice hotels, eat in fancy restaurants, and bring my friends and family along to various bits of it. There are a few things like videogames I would like to see developed but do not have the skills to make myself, so I'll throw a few tens of millions at those ideas. If they work out, awesome, they might even pay for themselves. I've always liked vehicle design so I will get a car coachbuilt. Not something flashy and loud, just something exactly how I decide it should be. A bunch of custom-built guitars.

So with needs and vices taken care of, and I cannot imagine I have even come close to getting through the first of five billions yet, it's time to actually try to do some good. I have a strong casual interest in history, so I think I'd enjoy funding work to be done by local institutions in places that are currently relatively under-explored. Ask universities in these places what they want, ask nothing in return other than that someone shows me whatever cool stuff they've learned every so often. You want to take the time to laser-scan a bunch of ancient buildings like the Zamani project is doing? Hell yeah, I'll pay everyone's wages for that. My thinking here is that if I'm not directing it I'm unlikely to unintentionally fuck something up through ignorance, and by paying for skilled work that is not extracting anything physical I am hopefully giving the local economies a boost in a way that should not result in me undercutting any local industries or anything

Buy a few representatives

Establish a trust dedicated to effectively and efficiently using the funds to advance my goals.

What are my goals? They’re centered around public health, housing, the environment, equality and justice.

Feels like wishful thinking, but then, so does winning 5 billion GBP…

Keep and invest 5 million. Give the rest to my city and schools.

I'd set up an NAEC level 4 epilepsy center for low income families, both adults and kids on separate floors. I figure between the MRI, EEG, MEG, SPECT, PET, doctors, surgeons, nursing, land, building, etc I could burn through some of that money and possibly setup an endowment that would allow it to run perpetually. If successful I'd setup secondary and tertiary sites in rural areas, all free of cost for the patients if viable.

I've got a nearby city that's been exploding in popularity. Creating my own suburb nearish to that should be sustainable, and reduce the inflation of COL.

I'd become a sponsor of the Trillion Tree Project to help mitigate the effects of climate change.

I'd organize a group to help clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and probably find some way to reuse all that plastic, to reduce the amount of new plastic that needs to be created.

buy/build a house at boat club, open a cafe and just deposit rest of the amount in bank. might buy some land too.

ps. boat club is a place in chennai that's known for its insane land price.

Well, my "if I won the lottery" fantasy only requires a few million. One by one, I'd tell my mates to come check out my new place, which turns out to be a condo at Circuit of the Americas. While we're overlooking my collection of mint-condition shitbox cars that have no reason to be preserved, I'd hand them a check for enough money to wipe out their debts and buy a house... along with a non-disclosure agreement.

Then I'd disappear for a while, taking a road trip around the country without any sort of financial or scheduling concerns. Just show up in a random city, spend a few weeks seeing all the sights at my own pace, then moving along whenever I feel like it.

Going from millions to billions, I doubt I'd deviate from that plan too much. Once I've got myself and my mates set for life, I guess I'd set the remaining 4.9 billion pounds aside for any impulse buys, like an F1 team or a couple hundred politicians.