£112 million - what would you do?
So Euro millions is £112 million this Friday.
I'm sure this has been asked before, but its monday, gloomy outside and I'm annoyed with my work, so..
what would you spend it on?
I know one of my purchases would be offering a research grant to my supervisor, but then asking her to re-write her proposal 40 times before I'd let her have it. mwahahahaha.
I would spend it on someone to write up my thesis because it's really getting in my nerves. Then I'd get my teeth scaled and polished because of all the coffee I'm drinking. After that, I'd go to Next and buy a new jumper. So, yep, I've got big plans for the money.
I really want an amazon kindle. My hubby laughed at me, but really that is one of the firs things I'd get. I also need a new jumper. Oh and some new trainers - I've worn the same ones for about 5 years now and they are really falling apart :-(
I love Wally's answers! I have very straight teeth as a result of 5 years of orthodontic treatment - BUT tea and coffee whilst thesis writing and working have stained them a little. Def. a appointment with a Harley Street Dental Hygenist would be a first spend with a lottery win ;)
Small purchases in my post-phd penury would be some new clothes, a bicycle, and perhaps a holiday. And a new mobile phone since I dropped it into water today and it is now only 1/2 working.
Lottery blow-outs would be a nice Georgian town house in London and a small pied-à-terre in some choice European captials. (got to have a property portfolio) ;)
Largesse to friends and family (nobody wants to seem a scrooge!)
Worthy causes (I may be a millionaire but I'm keeping it real): money to various education charities/trusts. some for support groups/awareness of male anorexia, and money for animal advocacy.
Oh I've had this conversation with hubby - but yes, tooth whitening is pretty much the top of my list too! I'd also buy the house I live in and then get it done up so it doesn't fall down and install FULL central heating and have it on full blast cos I could afford to (very ecologically unfriendly I know but its just a dream right now...) I'd also give a bursary to my uni for hardpressed mums so they can actually have enough to live on and study. I'd get lots of new books, some new jeans, a treadmill with auto incline, some new socks, some nice jumpers without holes/fading, some new running clothes, maybe a new car (well, newish) and a flat screen HD ready tv. I'd have a holiday with the kids as they haven't had one, and I'd also get my hair cut and coloured - haven't had it coloured in 2 years and the grey bits drive me mad, haven't had it cut in nearly a year and I look like I've got a lump of roadkill stuck on my head. Ermmm that's for starters lol, but I'm sure I could enjoy it for a bit. The best bit about it all though would be the end of worrying about where the next penny is coming from, and the rising sense of horror that next year is completion, there is no bursary, and if things stand the way that they are now then its actualy very likely I will have to drop out and never complete as we simply can't live on hubby's salary :'(
I think I would move out from where I'm living, put my PhD on hold and take a three-month holiday that involves visiting all the friends who have said I should come and see them. Then I'll come back and get on with PhD life as normal...and maybe buy a new jumper.
great question for a monday!
firstly, i think it'd be great cause it would mean I wouldn't have to worry too much about finishing my phd dead on time, and also I wouldn't have to be really stressed about finding a postdoc/job for as soon as it finishes. I'd love to stay at my current uni - so i think the idea of offering my supervisor funding for a project (with a good position for me in it obviously!) and getting him to do all the work for it, would be more than a dream come true!
second, i'd employ a brilliant statistician to do my analysis/spss stats. And definatly another person who would be responsible for quickly and efficiently recruiting all my participants for my studies over the course of my phd! those are the two things i hate most about research and find the most stressful!
then all the usual things, bigger better house, whatever car i want, whatever car my husband wants, holidays. I'd give enough to my mum so she can be comfortable for the rest of her life. buy a flat for my brother (he's a lazy layabout who is 30 this year and still lives at my mums despite the fact he has a good job and she can't get rid of him!) so my mum can have her own life back! And I would like to put some of it into savings for our own old age!
not sure all that's possible in the £112 million, but it's just a dream!
I'm torn on this one.... if it had been an earlier stage of the PhD I'd take a year out and travel, then come back and finish my PhD if I felt like it!
Now I'm writing up I'd feel bad about just leaving as I'd have wasted all my participants time, so I'd at least want to try and get a publication out there....so maybe I'd take a month off, get a nce place with a good office I could work in and complete the PhD. Then travel as a reward to myself.
I don't think I'd persue a research career if I didn't have to. I'd possible do another degree in something interesting just for the hell of it (and to stop myself becoming an alcoholic !)
Quit work to do PhD fulltime
Do fieldwork staying in nice hotels and flying first class instead of camping (yes really)
Move out of my house so it could be gutted and remodelled (get rid of the lovely 1980s avocado batthroom as a start) including an aga
Usual new cars, holidays etc for nearest and dearest
Some scholarships at all the unis i have studied at (four so far) plus my old school and my children's school or maybe major library donation
Maybe endow a chair somewhere
An iphone cos everyone I know has one
And my absolute luxury have freshly laundered 100% cotton bedding fresh every day (and someone to change the beds)
Great question for first day of teaching :-)
I'd pay off loans
give money to both sets of parent's ( Mine and hubbys) as they are both in need of dosh to do their houses up, my parents want to sell and move to France!
Go on Holiday to Canada and many other places
Go to loads of concerts and festivals
Buy a house
Give some to hubbys brother who is living and studying abroad and currently has to rely on his parents
I'd settle for a few million though don't need the whole lot, don't want to be greedy just enough to solve the financial problems of my loved ones.
Hmmm, I'd pay off my student loan and give a few million to my family to do whatever they want with. I would put some aside for my baby nephews and buy my brother and sister-in-law a new bigger house for them all. I would carry on with my PhD as planned but buy my own house...maybe do the secret millionnaire thing and give loads to charity, and definitely loads to the Alzheimer's Society. Then I would set some competition thing up whereby I would fully fund one new PhD student every year at my uni, seeing as though my own funding came from a random scholarship from a person who died a long time ago. Then....I don't know! Fund lots of research with it I guess! I certainly wouldn't hang on to most of it, I'd maybe keep 10 million! Best, KB
You're all sickeningly generous!
I might get a personal chef, and a personal trainer to work off all the butter and cream that the chef would have to put in everything (if its anything like Saturday Kitchen anyway)
