… To change your lifestyle?

This is the question I asked myself while standing in line to pay for another tank of gas (50$). While looking at a sign of a guy who had last week won a scratch and win lottery card (50,000$).

I said to myself “50K? Geeze, that’d be nice”…

Then I realised that maybe it wouldn’t make that much of a difference. Sure, it’d be enough to pay my car lease for the next 4.5 years. It’d be enough to put a decent downpayment on a nice enough house (a really nice house here is only 150K). And, it’d be enough to put some money in long term savings.

But, really, even 50K wouldn’t be enough to really change my standard of living.

I’d still have the same car. Still have the same furniture. Still eat the same food. Still have average digs. Still wear okay clothes. Nothing wrong with my life (at all!)… But, really, “what would it take?” I asked myself.

Obviously, it’d take enough to pay off a house free and clear (or enough to make it affordable). It’d take enough to pay off this car (I like this car, it’ll scale well to my new standard of living). I’d need new clothes for our family, new furniture for the house, some art and a motorbike. I wouldn’t really need “spending money”, since I’d still want to work and since the car is paid for and the house is affordable… My paycheck can go towards that, towards maintaining our lifestyle and towards our longterm savings.

So, how much are we looking at? I figure I’d need 100K for the house. 50K in cars. 7K in clothes and accessories. 10K in furniture and art. That’s, give or take, 175K. In order to have that much spare I’d need to actually “win” (inherit, invest and get big returns) 350,000$.

So, yeah, 50K doesn’t go as far as it did when I was 12.