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? 

Talking to Strangers can be Good for You (or how I met my friend Barb)

Boston is famously inhospitable to strangers. But not in my experience. I know one of my closest and oldest friends as a result of our respective willingness to start a polite conversation while standing in line together.

"My Sister Gerri" is the name of the documentary film broadcast at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts in Fall 1993. As an introvert who was new to Boston screwing up the courage to go to a movie solo, took considerable work on my part. The film, which tells the story of the woman whose lifeless body became a grotesque icon for the pro-choice side during the early 1970's iteration of this national debate, was premiered. Arriving early I took my place in the growing line of well-heeled ladies who lunched, the Planned Parenthood donors who didn't need to work and instead spent their days in meetings for their important causes.

I was 23, a full-time secretary in a juvenile prison, and a part-time graduate student at the BU School of Social Work. I felt alone and conspicuously out-of-place.

I wish I could remember the self-talk that reverberated in my head as I waited. I'm sure it went something like this,

Says the tortured devil on my shoulder: "What are you doing here? You don't belong here."

"I paid my money, I can be here if I want," spouts the brave angel who gives me precarious balance. 

"Where will you sit? Who will you talk with? Does anyone even know you are here sad, fat alone girl?" came the retort.

And so on, and so forth. 

But, this time, the angel on my shoulder won out over the tortured devil and I stayed.

Not only did I stay, but my angel gave me the chutzpah to strike up a conversation with the stranger next to me in line. A young , professionally dressed woman, also alone. "What brings you to see this film" was the likely start to our polite and reserved repartee. However, through our discussion I learned she was considering applying to the same graduate program I had just started, was living and working in Washington, DC, where I had lived during college, and was familiar with the parts of Central NY. We sat next to one another during the movie and both stayed for the talk-back with the filmmaker. As the event wrapped up this stranger handed me her card and we parted ways.

But that wasn't the end of it. While face-to-face interactions with strangers take an enormous amount of effort for me, I'm great with the written word. And I love a good handwritten note. So I dropped the stranger a note in the mail, thanking her for sharing the movie with me and wishing her luck with her graduate school decision. Letter dropped in the mail, I promptly forgot she existed.

That is until the following fall when I attended the new student breakfast reception on campus. Still largely alone at school (it was a hard program to do as a part-timer), I may have been chatting with an acquaintance when a woman approached me. She had been searching for me in the crowd because she wanted to thank me for helping her to make and achieve her graduate school goal.

"Huh?" I'm sure I said.

The stranger reminded me of the movie at the MFA and told me the note I'd sent to her later moved her to finish her application to the program she herself was now starting.

The stranger became Barbara and we became fast friends, sharing stories about our transition to Boston, bonding over classes and field work, and considering our professional aspirations as we moved through the professional training portions of our education. 

Our band of buddies grew. Eventually there were five of us living in one block of nearby Central Square in Cambridge, and two more who would join our crew we called Stitch and Bitch. Long after we marched the stage to receive our diplomas we continued to meet weekly for happy hour beer and curried French fries. 

Because we were both willing to talk to a stranger, Barbara met her now husband, and I was introduced me to my therapist. Barbara had a wonderful cat to love as her own when a move forced me to give him up. And I had the privilege of receiving the first afghan she ever crocheted from start to finish. 

Because we were both willing to talk to a stranger, we've experience the comfort of having a friend bear witness to our respective heartbreak, job loss, physical ailments, and family traumas. We have shared the joys of new love, new homes, new children, and many new years.

It has been 19 years since Barbara Charton Lambiaso and I first met. Just this week we shared wishes for a new year, and made plans to go to a lecture together. I am so touched by this friendship with my Gal Pal Barbara. Touched by the longevity and depth of our connection, and touched with the knowledge that we still love each other as much as we did when we first met, and at least as much as we will when we are old women.