Pretend the $20 million is guaranteed, and if anything will increase slightly over time.
What problems could be significantly improved for $20 million?
(I am dreaming of winning the $1.55 billion Powerball drawling. Then taking the lumpsum, posting taxes, investing, and spending 4% each and every year. I understand that the actual may be more, or less than the started amount.)
Quit my job
Pay off and renovate my house.
Buy a new car, something nice but not over the top.
Set up services for my neighborhood to drag the people round me out of poverty and ensure every kid gets the chance to get a good education.
Ensure all housing in my neighborhood is up to code and in good shape/safe to be lived in.
Pay off the debt of every person in my neighborhood, prioritizing medical and student debt.
Buy the people I love the things they need, set up trusts for their kids, pay off their debt, help them financially without enabling them into their bad habits.
Feels like that should probably reach $20m fairly quickly.
Become a landlord that makes housing actually accessible driving down prices and providing safe places for people in my neighborhood to live.
Whilst I am very anti landlord, that last point is interesting.
Say, if someone had enough money to buy out thousands of houses and made them cheapest around, undercutting everyone, then sold them to the occupants if they wanted to buy… Would that somehow fix the renting crisis we're in today?
I’m also anti-landlord, because of how the system is built. But if someone was independently wealthy and approached it as a philanthropic endeavor it could be different and solve the housing crisis for at least some. I wouldn’t be in it to make money, I’d be in it to give people that need somewhere to live a place that they can afford. And yes, eventually buy if they want to, though not everyone with limited income can afford the up front costs associated with owning (like when an appliance breaks, or there’s another problem with the building) so I understand why some wouldn’t want to. But if I had the means to take a loss on it, and did, it feels very different than the capitalist landlord squeezing tenants to make their salary.