haha, Ive actually joked with my GF that im going to buy a big bookshelf for the living room, and then the only thing im going to put on it is my kindle

hippie pablum

Humans have invented these comforts and luxuries for a reason, and the world's economy depends on the desire for this. It's a good thing. The primary function of any First World citizen should be the accumulation of money.

South America is indeed a ****hole and citizens there do indeed kidnap/rape/mug. And what's worse is, you can't really blame them, their poverty is largely the cause of the situation. The same poverty that some clowns here all but celebrate.

Are they "full of life"? Well, obviously your assertion there is absurd. How does one measure life-fullness? How does one even define it? My life would personally become "more fulfilled" by accumulating wealth and purchasing luxuries. Of course, I'm not representative of the world's population; I'm trying to illustrate how meaningless and vague your statement is.

I suggest you poll a bunch of poor people and ask them if they'd rather be rich or poor, and report back.

What the hell, people!!! I have three kids and I live just outside of Boston, MA. So, cost of living is really high. I make 80K, rent and have two cars (one of which is a 98 with 170K miles on it). We live in a nice suburb but our house is tiny.

I just got a second job to make ends meet. Our credit is shot and I live paycheck to paycheck. We are not extravagent. I haven't bought anything for myself in a year (like, literally, clothes, shoes, nothing).

However, if I lived in the mid-west, I get that I would be comfortable and wouldn't have any issues.

How you guys are giving universal opinions of how much 100K is insane.

Each situation is different but I'll tell you this. 100K in the northeast with a family is absolutely not balling but it's absolutely not peanuts either.

I've seen research that indicates happiness increases with income up to 75k and then flattens out. Who knows if that's true and obviously one would have to adjust for location and other factors.

What does seem to have solid empirical support is the Hedonic Treadmill which makes me think I'd just get used to all that nice **** and wouldn't care I had it after awhile. The security and piece of mind would be the best of the luxuries IMO.

There are so many incredible things one could do with infinite money, an entire list would take up pages.

- Hire 100 women (or dudes) to compete for your affection. The one that pleases you most gets a million dollars and a stay in your mansion.

- Hunger Games: you could likely entice the more desperate citizens amongst you to fight to the death if the prize is large enough. Round up a bunch of homeless/thrill seekers/drug addicts/crazies and have them battle each other, perform daring feats, etc. All sorts of crazy ****. You could have them joust on a tightrope over the Grand Canyon, American Gladiator style. You could have them fight wild animals. You could have them run through a Death Maze filled with all sorts of booby traps. The winner gets shipped a billion dollars. You could buy your own island for this purpose, and bribe whatever government exists there to hold your event.

- Construct the largest building in the world. Tall skyscrapers are cool, but I'd actually want to make the WIDEST building in the world. Buy out a city and make some 100million square foot palace that totally encompasses the area. If you fill the building out with the right grocery, government, and entertainment entities, you could find yourself with true control of the city, far more than any mayor could hope for.

- Get whatever athlete you like to play with you or train you. I'd hire Peyton Manning to throw me touchdowns, LeBron James to help me with my jumper, etc. Both those guys are crazy rich, but hey, I'm sure they'd be willing to part with a few hours of their time for an extra 10m or so.

- The same applies to entertainers. I'd personally hire Katy Perry and Scarlett Johannson to be my in-house entertainers (not necessarily to sing and act), but desires here just might vary a bit.

- MONEY FIRE! I'd make some proclamation on TV that I'm going to fill a large bucket with 1 billion dollars in cash and drop it on the crowd at 12:01AM on New Year's Day. Then, when the moment comes, I light the whole thing on fire, like The Joker. The crowd, previously hopeful and excited, now is in a state of despair and shock. Then they start getting riotous, but it's cool, I can just float away in my helicopter.

etc etc etc

I wouldn't want to do any of that. And though it seems awesome now, once you were able to do it, it wouldn't be that special anymore. Thread needs some billionaires to gain clarity on this. If I only had the money to make them post in OOT.

Your SN fits. TypicalBro. Can you read? I can't tell if you're serious or trolling.

I'm not a zen master (or a hippie fyi). But it should be pretty obvious that the point of life is not to make as much money as humanly possible. If your sole focus is that then you're probably missing all the rest.

SA- imo, the attitude these people have towards the adversity they face each and every day says a lot about their character and how they view life in general. You will get mugged/raped if you're a ****ing dumbass. The same can be said if you live in any major city in the US.

Who is arguing that being poor is better than being rich itt? That's obviously wrong. Learn to read.

If you're disappointed about the idea of being given 100k/ yr for life no strings attached then you're a very shallow person.

Lmao at thinking you wouldn't have any issues if you lived in the Midwest.

You rent instead of owning your home & you have bad credit(which is probably why you rent) You are going to have issues wherever you live in USA#1.

Oh ****, I'd definitely get the world's premier special effects team to make it seem as though Jesus is returning and the rapture is happening and all that mess, to really rile up the religious nutjobs. Maybe I could, like, get a million frogs and spring them on some small town in the South and make them think it's one of the biblical plagues.

Of course 100k per year is an enormous amount of money in a 3rd world country you db, but we are talking about murica here.

Oh really? Is it indeed "pretty obvious"? Outside of health, I fail to see anything that's more important. Wealth doesn't have to be your SOLE focus, certainly, and I didn't imply otherwise. But can you go ahead and name these more important things for us to focus on? Is it some vague nonsense about broadening horizons or the human condition?

You can get mugged/raped even if you're super cool and street smart. Obviously. And yes, there are poor areas in the US too. Duh?

The dissonance required to write the second paragraph right after the first (especially the "learn to read" part) is pretty impressive. Nobody is disappointed with the idea of getting shipped 100k a year every year. People are just unsure if it'd be enough to fully satisfy them throughout their life.

If you think the purpose of life is to make as much money as possible then there is no point in continuing this discussion with you.

Nobody is disappointed, just saying it doesn't change much. We would still need to keep working (unless you aspire to mediocrity), though I suppose you could retire 5-10yrs earlier.

I don't think there is any PURPOSE to life at all. We're all just a bunch of animals trying to make the best of it. We all have different desires. It's highly irrational to assume there is some Platonic ideal purpose floating around out there. And it's pretty arrogant to assume your purpose is the one that should representative for the rest of the citizens of Earth.

lol @ purpose -- are you some kind of religious nut?

Purpose is a pretty funny looking word after you see it a bunch.

Edit: But again, I'll ask for you to go ahead and actually state what you think my purpose should be, instead of just attacking my statements.

As I scroll back through this thread, I find myself extremely disappointed at all the lack of imagination.

I mean, "travel"? First of all, many of you can do that already, secondly, just lol. Travel. Travel. I mean, maybe traveling could be cool if you could construct some monolithic airplane that could also go Mach 2 or whatever. Like, some overwhelmingly giant thing that clouds the sky. The size of that main ship from Independence Day. Everyone would know that you are set to arrive and to prepare accordingly. And once you get on the ground, you roll in a 20-deep formation of luxury vehicles, like a president or some bigshot mobster. One vehicle holds your bags, one holds your women, multiple will be for protection, some will simply be decoys to further confuse any would-be assassin.

It's not about the money in and of itself, really. It's about the incredible power you could yield over other humans and your environment in general.

Are there really people who wouldn't do badass stuff like this if they could? I can't even fathom the mindset, seriously.

Edit: sorry for all the postings, easy to get carried away by this; it's a lot of fun to think about

What are you talking about? If I made 80K a year in the midwest, I wouldn't have bad credit. I thought that was clear.

Who would still need to keep working? I'm hoping you're not speaking for everyone here. Because that would be insane.

I'm going to try to say this is the best way possible so you don't take offense:

You sound like a HUGE, HUGE, douche toolbag.

With all respect.

I'm an atheist. There is no little man in the sky looking down on us.

Ask people on their deathbed what they wished they had more time for. It's not going to be making more money.

The question was if you were given 100k/yr for life no strings what would you do. What are you passionate about? What would you pursue? Some of the answers itt were "i'd have to get a job because 100k isn't enough to support myself" which I thought was absurd considering many people survive on much less.

Imagine being given the opportunity to escape the rat race forever. Instead of focusing energy towards making money to survive, you can use that energy on things you've always wanted. Golf, reading, teaching, more time with kids, yoga class, whatever. Instead, people are saying they'd enter the rat race again and have a typical job which sounds insane to me.

For reference:

I'm Puerto Rican. Growing up my household's income was somewhere in the vicinity of $20k a year, which is about average for the island. Roughly 1/3 of my family hails from the Dominican Republic and my mother lived circa seven years in Colombia making do with less than $500 a month. My current household income is about $30k a year.

I'm not some out of touch rich kid. It's just that I (apparently unlike you) can actually do math and think rationally. An out of touch rich kid might actually think that poor people don't have it so bad because it justifies their own existence -- I know this because I've seen it happen.

FYP

I could, but you would never understand. You have a long way to go, but I promise, we all get taken there eventually.

I've been called worse. It's ok. Now, can you honestly tell me you wouldn't want to have the power, freedom, and luxury provided by my suggestions? It's just so baffling to me. Hey, guy, you want to live like a god? Nah, I'm cool, I just want to get along.

lol

1. Do you have a link to your data? It's pretty impressive that you've complied the opinions of all of these terminally ill people.

2. Do you think that those on their death bed that have spent their entire life in poverty don't look back and wish they were able to enjoy more of the spoils of life? This isn't a rhetorical question; I guess I wouldn't know.

I know, right? How dare those people desire some comfort or luxury in their life! They totally could give up some more money yet remain alive! I bet those people haven't even been to South America.

Edit: you still haven't told me what the purpose of life is

To answer the actual question:

If I had $100k a year, guaranteed for life, tax-free (and inflation-adjusted, this is important), I imagine I would have a stress-free existence because even if I decide to start a family I'll have enough money to live a comfortable existence -- but it's still not enough money that I could do whatever and not think about making more ever. I just would not pull my hair out over it.

I would definitely play cards. If I had this kind of revenue stream starting tomorrow I'd use it as leverage to build a fast bankroll and probably settle into playing HSPLO (maybe 5/10 or 10/20 PLO, or the max level I could beat) in Vegas or something. Given that I don't have tremendous pressure to make a huge hourly, I would relax and mostly treat the game as a game.

I would also dedicate some time/money to investing. I'd probably buy rental properties, maybe start a poker house or a few in Vegas.

I would travel a lot. As a single guy, $100k a year is probably enough that I could, like, own one car in Europe and one in the US and travel around in either one, staying at airbnb studios and ****.

I will take up photography. I love photography, but it's a brutally expensive hobby. I may take up other creative endeavors in time, such as filmmaking. Seems to me that nowadays you could produce a relatively decent film for like 50 grand or whatever.

When I'm ready to settle down with someone, I will likely buy a house or a nice condo. Hopefully by then I'll have doubled or tripled my $100k income, and be able to give my wife and kids every comfort and luxury I did not have growing up.

Freedom and Luxury, sure. But I wouldn't go bonkers with the luxury part as you would. Giant aircrafts? What the hell?

I could care less about being God or any power over other individuals. In fact, I absolutely would rather not have any of that.

In terms of your second points. I read an article written by a woman that spent 30 years as a hospice care worker. She wrote about all the regrets that all of her patients told her on their death bed. Thousands. The number one regret was not spending more time with family/working too much.

There are more important things in life than money. It's important, no doubt, but on your death bed, if your entire life was dedicated to making money, I'll bet you'll have huge regrets.