If I Had a Million Dollars

What would you do if you had a million dollars? A million dollars you HAD to spend on yourself?

This is the question being asked of me this week in The 52 Lists Project.

BMG and I play a variation of this game a lot, the variation where we fantasize what we would do if we won a fantastical amount of money in the laundry. After many heated arguments, we have a rough plan that involves giving a certain percentage of the winnings to our siblings and their children. We would also designate a certain percentage to be put into a foundation that I would run as my full-time job. And then, whatever is left over, we fantasize about. Sometimes we take a ridiculously extravagant vacation. Other times we buy multiple houses around the world (Paris! London! Hawaii! New York City!). Fancy cars, technology,

I've been a "Your Money or Your Life" person for nearly 15 years, which means I try to be very thoughtful about using my money to help me live my values. So, in the absence of having to compromise with my husband about how to spend my windfall, I would want to spend the money on things or activities that will help me live out my life goals of having a strong center and lots of adventures. This is what I came up with:

Creating a beautiful, peaceful, contemplative home - $711,000
I often think I'd like to live closer to the water, or in a beautifully renovated farmhouse in France. So I started my $1M journey by poking around on Zillow and the internet. I quickly realized that making these dreams a reality would would eat the entire budget. Finding just the right place to live isn't worth $1M. So, instead I'd spent 75% of my budget on:

• Renovating my house (again) from top to bottom, fixing the things we didn't do right with our 2013 renovation, adding space, repairing the things that have broken (e.g., the front porch) since we last renovated
• Hiring a landscape architect to make the yard beautiful - front and back. I'm trying to do it in dribs and drabs, with a shoestring budget and no skill with tasks like masonry. 
• Buying new furniture for the inside of the house to replace the Ikea pieces and the hand-me-downs that I wouldn't call "heirloom" quality

Travel - $192,016
Aside from wanting a beautiful and relaxing home, I'm not much of a 'stuff' person. This may be because I don't have kids, and therefore have no one to pass things down to. Suffice to say that, when I leave this mortal earth, I'd rather leave a legacy of adventure than a pile of things. So, I'd set aside $25% of the budget for the following bucket list travel experiences: .

• I'd take myself on a luxury safari to Africa, combined with a trek to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. This is a bucket list item for me. 
• I've long said my 50th birthday trip will be a whitewater rafting down the Grand Canyon with one of my sisters and one of my sisters-in-law. I'd foot the bill for this for everyone.
• Also on my bucket list is seeing every single national park in the U.S. I'd hit the road (and, in some cases, the air) to make this happen over the course of one year.
• I've also said I want to be the kind of aunt who takes her nieces and nephews on a special trip of their choice to celebrate their graduation - from either high school or college - depending on their personal trajectory. So, I'd set aside money to make this happen over the next two to 12 years. 

The only expense not included in either home or travel would be the purchase of a brand new, fully loaded, Subaru Outback, estimated to cost (in 2017 dollars) $45,000. I love my Subara Impreza wagon, but I'd want something with better towing capacity and more amenities. 

That brings me to $950,000. $50K short of the $1M goal. 

If I thought a little bit longer, I'm sure I could spend the remaining $50K. Maybe I'd buy season tickets to the Red Sox for as long as I could, or a shopping spree to replace my entire wardrobe, or maybe set aside money for a fancy gym membership or regular visits to the spa. All of these things would be nice. But, they are not core to to my lifelong happiness. 

So, rather than trying to figure out how to spend the leftovers, I'd plan to put the $50K I can't spend (plus all of the money I'm not spending right away) either into charities that make my heart go pitter pat, and/or in safe investments to earn income that I can use to supplement my paycheck. 

If you had $1M, what would you spend it on? 

Everything is Beautiful

What does beautiful mean to you?

Something is beautiful in my eyes if its essence creates in me a sense of speechless bliss.

The most beautiful things I've ever seen include:

1. The Northern Lights
After a long hike in the back country of Chilnualna Falls in Yosemite National Park, I was tired and dehydrated, and had just spilled camp stove fuel all over myself. I mentioned to my hiking companion that the sky was glowing, and was immediately pooh poohed for being delirious. And then he saw the dancing lights, and we sat down together next to our tent and watched.

2. The first glimpse of Yosemite Valley from the road to Glacier Point
The first time I saw this was the first time I believed in God.

3. The Eiffel Tower
I don't have a particularly industrial aesthetic, but the grace of this building thrills me any time of year, any time of day. I only need to stand under it to be moved to tears. (The Golden Gate bridge in SF does the same thing to me. I cannot explain it.)

4. The Thinker by Auguste Rodin

This one surprised me. It has copied so many times in so many trite ways, like Monet's Waterlilies series, or the Mona Lisa, I thought I'd be "so over it." But this sculpture moves me every time I see it. 

5. The Peaceful Death of Another Human Being

I've had the opportunity to bear witness to the peaceful death of another human being three times in my life. Each has been different, and each has been moving in its expression of love and spirit

6. The Ending to The Color Purple

This was the first R-rated movie I saw in the theater. I was a scandalous 15 when I saw it. Every time I see this I cry as hard as I did the first time. Which was so hard that my older sister thought there was something wrong with me. (You can ask her. The volume of my tears was disturbing.)

7. My Wedding

Not the whole wedding, but really one specific point in the wedding. As BMG and I were recessing down the aisle, making a beeline for the bar and the receiving line, he whispered, "Look up. Look around. We are surrounded by people who love and support us. I want you to remember this." So I looked up, and it was beautiful

I'm sure that, with a little more thinking, I could generate a much longer list of things I think are beautiful - things like tenderness expressed between my nieces and nephews, the sound of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's voice, summer flowers in Bavaria, the poetry of Langston Hughes. But, when I need a little beauty, these are the places my brain goes first.

Dream Girl

What did you want to be when you "grew up?" For me, the answer was always "an archaeologist." Sure, I went through the stereotypical little girl "ballerina phase", and the "veterinarian phase." When I left high school, I was certain I wanted to be the first female president of the United States. But I never lost my love for archaeology.

Unfortunately, to be an archaeologist, one also needs to master college-level chemistry. This was not in the cards for me, no matter how hard I tried (three times, to be exact). So, I turned away from the hard sciences in favor of the social sciences, and went down the path to Sociology, and eventually Social Work and Public Health.

Today, nearly 30 years after I declared my intention to be President, I work as a writer and marketing strategist for a financial services company. A good job, but not my dream job. While I don't really have a ton of time to develop a dream career, I still have time to get a dream job.

My list of dream jobs is eclectic. It includes:

• Travel writer
• Prop master
• U.S. park ranger
• Museum curator
• Landscape architect
• Political strategist

At this moment in time, professional stability feels more important than dreaming. A stable paycheck, stable health insurance, stable place to go every day. So, for now, it feels likely that my path involves continuing my current work, maybe moving into middle management, and eventually retiring with a stable corporate retirement package.

Once I'm retired, I'll let myself dream again. I have a fantasy of becoming a National Park volunteer, which would allow me to taste what is is like to be a park ranger, and help me achieve my goal of seeing every National Park in the U.S.

If you could do anything you wanted, what would it be? Are you doing it now? Or do you have plans to achieve your dream sometime in the future?