Ask HN: What would you do with a million dollars today?
It seems that VCs is throwing money indiscriminately at anything with a narrative.
Do you disagree with the fact that eco-chambers are getting bigger and louder? This in turn crowds out the true subcultures and emerging behavior.
If content marketing, meta-verse, tokenization of everything, short-form video, and meme investing are overrated, what seems underrated but high impact in the future?
What real problems are worth solving today with computers?
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Profit is the most reliable signal of what people need. If they're paying extra, it means they get even more value out of it.
Not allowing profit is when economies fall.
Are true subcultures like true scotsmen?
Depends on who you ask, but I'm going with "wheat".
"Experts" in the US often say about 20 years at a $40,000/yr withdrawal rate. Withdraw more, or enter a recession, or require more time, and a million dollars isn't enough.
(not investing advice, see https://www.reddit.com/r/ExpatFIRE/ for more info or other leanFIRE locations)
Actually, just living off say, 3% interest, and withdrawing $2000/month, you'd get a luxurious lifestyle here. It'll cover health insurance, bills, rent, a mid range car, eating at restaurants every day, plus a little extra to buy some nice toys.
40 years old. A million pound would last me the rest of my life.
Assuming I earn ~£50k a year, lets say £35k a year after tax and deductions, for the next 20 years, that comes out at about £700,000 after tax income. I live comfortably right now off that.
That still leaves me £300k.
My outgoings are pretty small, and will be drastically smaller in 5 years or so when the mortgage is paid off.
If you give me a tax free million today, I would quit my job tomorrow, as that's more than I'll earn for the rest of my life.
That's not counting money I already have in savings too.
The big roadblock is I don't know how to drive a dump truck, excavator, or bucket truck though. :)
https://digthisvegas.com/
And it’s not “drive in circles”, it’s “dig a 3ft hole, pile the dirt then drive backwards over it so you can see how hard it is flip the machine over”
Very cool experience.
I would take about 20% and plan to squander it. Vacations, car, cloths.
I would put 80% in something with a time lock of about a year. Something with a penalty for early withdraw. This would provide 2 features:
1) Time to think about it
2) Protection from 'newly discovered' relatives and friends who want a piece. "Sorry I would love to help, but the money is invested, and there are SEVER penalties for early withdraw, you do not want me severely penalized do you?"
Now if you are talking about how I would invest a million dollars, that would be different. Short term I like lampshades idea of Wheat. Anything natural gas. Anything to protect against inflation.
To answer your question - $1 million would fund two or three skilled people full time for a year. So the problem has to be relatively small. I'd maybe spend it on an ad blitz to try to find homes for dogs and cats currently in shelters in a small number of cities.
If the goal is to support a project which will improve the world, I'd support existing projects to either make clean water more accessible or help the world's poorest people become more self-sufficient (eg, Heifer International).
Thank you for the hypothetical question. It reminds me that hoarding money isn't an end goal, but a means that enables other goals.
https://ukandu.org/
It's an amazing group and mission. Some of the best people I've ever met in my life.
But it's limited by the handicapped mobile platforms, who are nothing more than ad clients.
All it takes is to create an open (as in user has full access, no limits), responsive platform and current status quo will disappear overnight, nobody will look back. Same code running on your high-powered desktop and you "phone" or tablet, making no distinction between them other than to adapt to screen size. What programs you use on either device will solely depend on the actual program's resource requirements, nothing else.
Your AAA game will make no sense to be run on your phone (which can be attached to a screen), unless the game is engineered to scale to such low extremes. Your code editor, on the other hand, can be run wherever.
Unfortunately desktops seem to be going the same way.
There are a few linux phone and tablet projects, eg pinephone.
A million dollars is not enough to guarantee you can improve the lives of many but it's certainly enough to do it for a few.
$1 million for investment, but otherwise free-and-clear? I'd form an LLC and then buy into local cash-flow businesses like laundromats, equipment rentals, and apartment rentals. Then I would use the cash flow from those business to pursue more exploratory business ideas.
A new system for procurement and allocation could save trillions of dollars of waste. A couple economists and game theory specialists might be able to crack it. It’d be worth a million to try.
But in all seriousness, I don't think $1mm is enough to move the needle in the grand scheme of things. I would save it for retirement, maybe buy a new car.
Is not as high-impact that save the earth, but I think is important to give real alternatives to the excess of "cloud-dependent" tech that exist. Local-first, truly personal, etc.
1 million dollars would solve one problem: buying myself a house. I can handle the transaction using a computer.