Do you remember being small and dreaming of a million pounds, the endless riches that would bring, the countless riches that would be?
Such riches.
And then, growing up, inflation, reality and now, the horrible realisation that even if I had One. Million.Pounds it would only actually just cover the cost of the lovely small holding farm I’m convinced I’m one day meant to live in (when I’m about 60!) and I’d still have to work really hard to maintain it and make it pay its way.
So I’m not convinced that £1million would really change my life to make it easy, though it would put me somewhere different and give me a a life that was, perhaps, a more interesting one to be living.
That big amount of money would maybe make me feel guilty if I spent it all on just us. I’d want to give some to charity and some to family and some to each of the children and their futures and then by the time I had assuaged the guilt, there wouldn’t be enough for the small holding, so we’d borrow what was left and fret and panic about staying financially safe.
So I think I’ll pass on the big wins for now. Although, if someone actually offered it of course… well, I’d probably think differently.
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But I was asked to blog about suddenly having £100,000 extra to spend and that feels a whole lot easier to consider. I could do a lot with £100,000.
I’d start with the sensible.
- I’d pay off the greater part of my mortgage.
But then I wouldn’t sit back and be relieved to have less to worry about. No.
- I’d take the girls back out of school, rent out the house at enough of a profit that it covered having someone working our jobs in the business for a few months.
That’s the trouble with owning a business; you can’t just run away.
- And once they had it all nailed down and knew what to do, I’d book the biggest European cruise (once I didn’t need to worry about scary viruses any more) and I’d take my girls all around their continent, stopping off for train trips in and weeks there and treks up the Pyrenees, all told with stories from my childhood and our pre-kid days.
I’m scared of flying, really scared and frankly I think a cruise would be the only way forward. And I can live without the wider world but I’m really sad I’ve not met more of Europe in my adulthood. We could live on not too much during that I think. And time together would have a huge impact on our family just now.
- When it was time to go home, I think we’d have a new perspective. Fresh ideas. Rejuvenated. And so we’d change the house to buy to let, grab our courage by the lapels, shake off all the trapping of the life that we had before the holiday and find a new one somewhere else. And in that new life, I’d use some of those new perspectives and new ideas and time to have sat and thought and just be me, to do some of the good in the world I want to do.
Our £100,000 would have given us a dream and a life back and security all in one and we’d use that base to leap forward and take a risk. And if it all went wrong, yes, we’d have something to come back to. But hopefully we wouldn’t need to. It would be little enough to still need to work hard and stay focused and I think that would be better for us too. I think that is what would give us a safe future; I’m not sure that having it all handed to us too easily really would. Not in the things that really count.
And I wouldn’t need to feel guilty or afraid. It would be enough to have taken a some, learned a lot and know enough to be something better.
Maybe that’s blue sky thinking 🙂
I wouldn’t say no to some blue sky right now.
This is my entry to Jackpot 247’s Blogger £100K Dream Competition.
