How I Would Spend $1,000,000

It’s Thursday and we are on the downhill slide to the weekend. Hurricane Olivia has been hanging around Hawaii bringing lots of wind and rain, but thankfully nothing too major. I’m sending love to all my friends on the East Coast whose lives have been completely uprooted thanks to Hurricane Florence. I’m back today with my 9th prompt of my September Blogging Challenge and one I’m just a tiny bit excited about 🙂 If you missed my blogging challenge announcement post, I’ve been feeling a little bit uninspired by blogging and social media and I wanted to bring it back to where it all began…little old me behind my keyboard tapping away. And so – that’s what is happening! I know there are “blog every day” challenges, but honestly – I don’t blog every day as it is, so committing to 30 days was intimidating for me. Instead, I put together 20 prompts that really inspired me and whipped up a list for when you can expect them here. Today’s prompt is how I would spend $1,000,000. When I was creating these blog prompts, I knew I wanted to feature a topic on how I would allocate funds, but I specifically chose $1 million, because the reality is that it’s not the grand number it used to be within our economy. It’s a lot of money, but not an infinite number where you’ll see me blowing it on having a full time staff, private plane, etc. So, if you’re interested in seeing how I would spend $1,000,000 today’s post is for YOU!

How I Would Spend $1,000,000

I so often feel like when we envision winning money or having a specific (large sum) of money, we always think about all the ways we would spend it, which – of course! I mean, that makes total sense. But if I was handed $1,000,000 tomorrow, the very first thing I would do is invest $300,000 across my Roth IRA, stocks and savings. When I was younger, saving for retirement would absolutely not be at the forefront of my mind, but it’s safe to say it has become a priority as I’ve gotten older. I was listening to the radio the other day and it estimated that Americans who fall into the 23-31 range today need to look toward $800,000 in assets to live comfortably as they aged. Needless to say, it got my wheels freaking spinning!

With my remaining $700,000, I would have a little bit of fun. My parents have always gone out of their way to help me as needed and Dane’s parents too, so making sure they were each gifted $50,000 would be a priority for me. I originally thought about saying I would pay off their debt, but honestly – I would just give them money and let them spend it how they want – no strings! Total left: $600,000

The next checks I would write would be to charities that I love, including The Jedidiah Thomas Smith Foundation, Life is Labs, Penn State THON, Operation HOH: Heal Our Heroes, The Independence Fund and NAMI. I would also probably go on Kickstarter and donate money to projects I found interesting, because I think that creative entrepreneurs are some of the best freaking people in the world. Total left: $450,000

And now – some fun! Does anyone watch the show Below Deck Mediterranean? I would charter that mega yacht in a heartbeat for a week of cruising around Naples + Capri, Italy. Both sets of parents and some of our closest friends would be invited for a week of fun, sun and lots of delicious food and cocktails. And of course, with plenty of money to tip Capt. Sandy and crew 🙂 This article breaks down the cost of the yachts per week, but I think a safe number is $300,000 for the week including tip. On the surface it just seems like a vacation, but it’s such a level of extravagance that I would feel nauseous about in any other situation, so being able to experience something so once-in-a-lifetime with the people we love most would be really special. Total left: $150,000

Dane and I clearly love traveling, so we would probably cross a few trips off our travel bucket list, spruce up our closets a bit and binge on grocery shopping at Whole Foods (sorry I can’t afford that place day-to-day, LOL!). Another thing Dane and I always talk about doing is booking airfare to visit the friends we have in various places and just showing up and surprising them, so it would be really cool to be able to do that, especially since we live so far and it’s otherwise very impractical. Total left: $50,000 (and I would just let it sit in my bank account!)

Now that I’ve dished on what I would do with $1,000,000, I’d love to know how you would spend! If you shared this on your blog today, definitely link up below + come back tomorrow when I’ll be sharing my earliest childhood memories! Thank you to Unsplash for some of the stock photography used in this post 🙂