I mentioned in "If I had a Million Dollars" that Mel and I figured somewhere between 5 and 10 million would have us set for life, with whatever we wanted. Now that sounds like a lot; it's more than 30 years of work at my current salary for example; but really it's not all that much on the "rich" scale.
Also that covers pretty much anything we would ever want materially speaking. Our wish list isnt huge, but it isnt cheap either. Basically our dream list looks something like this:
1. a nice house, with a few acres, near a small airport and a navigable body of water leading either to the ocean or a large lake, wooded areas, and a reasonable climate with seasons - mountains a plus. The house shouldn't be huge, but we want four or five kids, so at least 6 bedrooms. I figure 4000 square feet would be more than enough. Also a good sized workshop, at least a 4 car garage, a pasture, and a paddock. In an ideal world I could even have a private shooting range and airstrip (they could easily use the same land). Call it 1 million to 2 million assuming we move someplace reasonable; or maybe as little as half a million someplace cheap.
2. Nice home furnishings, including decent computers, professional grade kitchen, nice home theater etc... call it another .25 mil to .5mil
3. A couple decent cars (a high end sports sedan, and a nice SUV), a couple boats (one sail one power), a couple motorcycles and dirt bikes (two street, two dirt), and a truck to tow them. Maybe throw in a "play" car or two (a jeep and an AC cobra kit car or something similar), a couple watercraft, a couple quads, maybe a couple snowmobiles... Call it another .25 mil for the short list, and maybe as much as .5mil for everything.
4. A machine shop and woodworking shop. I want all the tools I'd ever need to build the stuff I want to build (cars, boats, motorcycles, guns, furniture, and airplanes).
Probably another .25 mil
5. Horses. My wife wants two horses. And of course along with that goes all the ancilary stuff. Figure it at .25mil
6. Gun and Accessories. Lots of guns and accessories. And ammo, lots and lots and lots of ammo. A few class three items, but no straight collectors pieces. Some nice custom rifles and pistols. Call it $125,000
7. Books, CDs and DVDs. We want an EXTENSIVE library of all three. Everything on our amazon wish lists and more. Call it another $125,000
8. Supplies... I mean raw materials and plans for ... everything. Like I said, we want to build and make stuff. Lots of stuff. Airplanes, boats, cars, guns, ammo, furniture, other woodworking, quilting, clothing... stuff. And we want to build a lot of it so make it $250,000 worth of raw materials and parts
The final material one is almost certainly the most expensive thing we can't actually live in...
9. A six to eight seat light plane. A large piston twin or light turbine are really our only chices here if we want an 8 seater; but there are reasonable six seat singles. Of course in the general aviation world reasonable takes on a different meaning. We'd also need a hangar for it, and for the homebuilt projects I'd want to work on.
The worst part there though is the price. Not only is it high, it's highly variable. It could go anywhere from $250,000 all the way up to 2 million.
10. Education. On the immaterial side we'd both like to go back for masters degrees, and some additional professional training (I'd like to learn advanced machine work, and better welding, also lots of additional firearms training). And of course we'd want to put money away for the kids colleges as well. Hell we could put aside anywhere from $500k to over a million there.
Anyway, I can't imagine ever wanting anything more than that materially; and I already have everything I want in my family, except maybe more of them. Plus that would let me pursue what I really want to do professionally (which I'll go into at some later time).
The total cost for all that? Somewhere between 3 million and 6 million.
It's a good goal to shoot for really; and it's entirely achievable.
Hell, I'd be pretty happy with about a third of that. Basically all the same stuff, just less of it; and I could actually do THAT in the next four or five years without too much difficulty (and WITH a lot of debt) if the universe doesnt kick me in the balls again any time soon.
