I (haven’t) won £113 Million on the Euromillions!
You know I think the best thing about playing the lottery is not the winning. Mostly because that never happens. No, the best part for me is planning what I’ll do if I win. For just a pound (or two) down the drain I can daydream of becoming wildly rich.
Today my mind got going in the place I usually come up with ideas; the shower. Normally I get grandiose ideas in the shower but, like dreams, they fade fairly quickly. Today they haven’t and with nothing much else to do on a wet and cold October evening I thought I’d just write about my current plan of action if I were to become a millionaire.
Now first off, most of this could be scaled down and done even with one of the smaller wins but I like to dream of the silly big wins, such as the one last week of £113 million. So what’s the first thing to decide? Well first is who do I split the money with. I would first give money to my family and split the rest 50/50 with my wife.
Family & Friends
So ‘core’ family first then. A million is a nice sum, enough to change your life but perhaps not so much that you would live off forever, depending on your age I suppose. So to each of these, a million:
- My parents,
- Wife’s parents
- My 2 sisters
- My daughter for when she turns 18
- I’d speculate we’d need to reserve another 2 million for 2 potential extra children
- My half brother and sister would get bugger all but I would perhaps split a million between their children to have
So that’s 10 million gone. For nice round numbers, I’d leave 3 million to myself that I could only access once I reach 50 in the event I royally screw up my fortune, allowing me to still live into old age with plenty. Which leaves a nice 50 million for me, 50 million to my wife.
Next on the list is friends. I don’t have many, so this one’s easy. If any of you are reading this, this is not an empirical measurement of how much I like you. I’m also including people that may be on a mutual friends list with my wife, so it wouldn’t necessarily come out of my pot of gold.
- Best mate Rob – 1 million.
- Ben & Lucy – 1 Million.
- Matt, Bob, Joe, 100k
- Jem & Tom – 1 Million
There are half a dozen work friends that would also get quite a lot.
Other Awesome People
There are a few internet people and websites that I would like to share my riches with. Rock, Paper, Shotgun would get a very large pile of cash. There are a few indy web-comics guys who deserve a reward for entertaining me for free over the years. Of course I can’t forget my Twitter friends either. One would get a large amount for being caring. One would get enough so she could quit her job and go for something she really wants. Half a dozen would get a few thousand just for being interesting people. Then there is one person who I would want to hire in one of my big ideas because she is very clever.
Oh and it goes without saying, but I would of course give bucket-fulls to charity!
Ok, but what do I do?
With silly money and only a short life, there is no point in being boring so I would create an empire. A Geek Empire! Our mission statement would be to work on projects that promote fun, community, charity and education through geek-flavoured ideas. Where possible projects will be self-sustaining but if the pile-o-cash burns out then so be it, we will enjoy spreading joy whilst we can. As I work with kids I think a lot of what I would do would be to the benefit of young people. How about funding a hundred schools to run after-school D&D clubs? Hiring actors to dress up as comic book characters and hand out comics, games and toys to sick children in hospital? Sponsoring our future website gurus to start their own businesses? Start our own indy label for comics and movies that help our future Mark Millars and Joss Whedons get their content out to the wider world?
To me that sounds pretty damn fun. Who’s with me?
