“What Would You Do If You Got Given £1 Million?”

That's the thought question posed by SavingNinja in the first of a series of Thought Experiments. 

A few other bloggers have taken part so far, including:

Ms ZiYou

theFIREstarter

Quietly Saving

in-deed-a-bly

EarlyRetirement

Dr Fire

"What would you do if right at this very instant you got given 1 million great British pounds? This could be from a lottery win, an IPO, a scratch card, you name it. No tax needs to be paid, it’s just been plopped directly into your run of the mill bank account."

I can't resist a bit of impromptu scenario modelling so I went to fire up the spreadsheets. Then I saw this!

"No pre-planning or major editing allowed and blabbering is definitely encouraged! It should read like an internal monologue."

Oh no. Fresh off the brain and onto the page. I need my spreadsheets. 

Hell's bells. 

[unclenches] Ok, here goes. 

What would I do with 1 million?

Keep quiet. Like deathly quiet. I've heard about so many people losing friends and family, being inundated by begging requests, and arousing such anger and jealousy that they've been forced out of their homes. 

I’d never admit to anything. As soon as I found out, I would suggest to DH an impromptu overnight stay somewhere so I could tell him in the hotel room and no-one would hear his screams. Then he would hopefully have calmed down by the following day to have a reasonable conversation about keeping schtum on pain of death for, say, the rest of his life.

Then in the first year: 

• Keep back a float of £100k in readily available cash 
• Stick £900k straight into a global fund for six months or so until I have a workable plan
• Martin can give his one week's notice and retire straight away to work on rebuilding our collection of barn-find classic cars
• I would carry on working for the first year at least, although would drop to part-time
• Not pay off the mortgage but overpay the maximum

Years 2-5

• I give up employed work and seek some interesting charity/volunteer ops around smallholding/gardens/horticulture. ("I would tell people I've changed jobs to something more fulfilling. DH retiring early? Not such a push for people to believe. Me retiring early? Pull the other one. Where has the money come from???") 
• Do an upholstery and restoration course and refurbish antiques
• Read for hours every day
• Continue overpaying the maximum amount on the mortgage
• Put up solar panels and buy an electric car
• Complete some jobs in the house: new master bedroom en-suite, new main bathroom, new flooring in kitchen and lobby, new kitchen.
• Might look at giving a lump sum to nieces and nephew to help them get on the housing ladder/pay down some mortgage.

That's it. That's all my brain could come up with. 

We wouldn't sell the house because we love it here. 

We wouldn't spend a lot of time travelling as DH wants to do the cars and I want to keep animals. Also we don't want to put our cats into catteries or leave them for weeks at a time in the house being fed by visitors twice a day.

In fact, it is close to our list of what we want to do anyway, just compressed into a much shorter time-frame.

Interesting. I win £1 million and do the same things I was going to do anyway.

I suddenly feel very boring. 

😆