Wed 2 Jul 2008
What I wanna know…how will you help others? How widespread will that help be?
Let’s assume a substantial, after all applicable taxes, amount of $30 million. Who will you help and how (with a smattering of ‘why’)? Just family or a multitude of impoverished people?
Posted by Kickstart9 answers so far!
Okay, let's hear it.
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I would help my family out (say pay off all my parents’ debt), and then donate a set percentage each year to the literacy org I volunteer/Habitat for Humanity/the ACLU
Plus the local no kill animal shelter.
BTW, the submission removed “$30″ from before ‘million’.
I would pick out a few charities to donate to and perhaps rotate charities regularly. Among them would be the EFF and the Salvation Army.
I would also be interested in using the money so that I didn’t have to work, or not work a lot, and volunteer my time in various places.
As for family/friends, I would only help those who currently choose to associate with me. Second cousin Mabel who comes to me after not speaking to me for 10 years isn’t going to get a thing.
Buy Mom a house anywhere in the world she wants it (we lost the home where I grew up in January).
Launch a colorectal cancer fund in memory/honor of her twin sister, likewise a Mom to me, who passed away last Sept. Ideally to help rural, lower-income people gain access to treatment options they can’t afford.
Find five other charities in my community who I believe are doing the best work with the most efficient use of resources, and give each a chunk – with the proviso that I get an annual letter on how effectively the money is being used.
Hire a wealth management firm to invest and manage the remainder and pay me a monthly distribution for living expenses.
I would definitely make sure every member of my extended family never had an excuse to talk to me again by, e.g., paying off their mortgages, debts, medical bills, establishing some sort of trust fund for each of them for their various old-age related requirements, paying for college tuition, etc. This might seem like a nice gesture, but really I am just paying them off so I don’t ever have any contact with them again.
As far as helping others I’m not related to, I would probably do a lot of the ‘robber baron’ shit that Carnegie did. I honestly know nothing about charity, so I would do some public works stuff, like establishing libraries and universities, scholarship programs, etc. (depends on the amount we are talking about here). I would certainly take a huge chunk of the money, give it to someone extremely clever and just live on the interest, thus preserving a good portion of the wealth for my family, after I’m (finally) dead.
Is this thing going to let me post this time?
It’s swallowed two comments so far into the void.
My original question postulated “30 million dollars”, and the software swallowed the dollar sign.
Between something weird on the filter eating your “$30″ and Akismet mistaking your followups for spam, I think you just got some terrible luck there, Kickstart. Amended now, sorry for the headache.
Whoever survives the deathmatch gets $27.50. Let’s see, that’s about 1 million deathmatches and a tidy 2.5 mil to boot.