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As you might have heard, this year’s Nobel Prizes were announced this week. In addition to the prestige of winning, when the Nobel laureates collect their awards in December, they will also collect cash prizes of 8 million kronor ($1.2 million). If a pair or trio wins a prize together, they share the money equally. If an American wins it, the take-home after taxes is $768,000.
According to the article linked above, most winners use the money to take care of the important stuff, like mortgages and their children’s college funds, but others donate the money to charity. Some also do something fun, such as the British 1993 laureate who built a croquet lawn in his yard.
So pretend for a moment that there’s a Nobel prize for blogging or Facebook status updating or Twitter tweeting or Pinterest pinning or whatever it is that you are awesome at. You’ve just won that money. What are you going to do with it?
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Pay off bills and debt and then sponsor a whole bunch of kids through Compassion International! Fun.
Have both the front & back porches on my house ripped off and completely redone while I vacation somewhere warm & tropical by the water, with a good looking pool boy.
Buy a real house, pay off the condo (and either rent it out or sell it thereafter), get Dave a new car, and sock the rest away in savings/investments/college fund for the baby. I’d probably also gift to my sister the house in my hometown that she currently rents from me, pay off my parents’ mortgage, and add some money to my niece’s college fund.
Kids’ college. Not sure there’d be anything left after that, but if so, I’d pay off debts. Boring, I know.
I’d build a library in my fair city!
Move house so my kids can walk to school and hang out with their friends without needing mum’s taxi service.
I would definitely pay off any and all of my bills. I would give money to my mom and the hubby’s mom. I would donate to my kids’ school and to the local food banks. I would take a nice vacation with my family and maybe buy a new minivan (I’m a dreamer) and then stuff the rest into the kids’ college fund.
Ahhhh. That was fun.
First of all, this is a prize for Peace or Literature or something with words, right? Because if I win ANY prize for science, it’s all over, hang it up. But if I legitimately had a nice 3/4 of a mil, I’d get a little house in the country, RETIRE, give a chunk to the Nature Conservancy, and sock the rest away for emergencies and the kids (same thing).
I would pack up shop and move to Rome.
Pay the bills, take a nice trip, and sock the rest away for retirement.
I’d have to fight my husband for it. : )
Me: Pay off the house, take a trip to Paris, start my quilting store/business, sock the rest away. Key to this dream: hubby must keep his job.
Hubs: Pay off the house, start his own brewery. And I’m sure I’d be the one keeping my day job.
Fun.
House repairs would top my list –the main bathroom is a mess, and the garage is going to disintegrate in a few years. New windows in the part that was built in 1845 so we could use less propane in the winter. Some landscaping. Add a significant amount to Emma’s college fund. Make sure my parents had everything they need. Anything else I’d probably put toward the mortgage and savings.
a nice compact house in North Berkeley….with neighbors far enough to be pleasant, yet not annoying
that would probably take up the whole amount. This being California and all…but if there were any left, it would be spent in Tuscany and Provence…until it ran out. Then it’d be back home to Berkeley, and a job working with animals.
Pay off all the kids school loans and pay for my son’s grad school. Go to Paris. Buy a house. And with all the money we would have spent on the above, make charitable contributions and save for retirement.
Wow… what a concept!
I think a chunk of that would be for kids’ college expenses. Once the kids are grown, I’d like to do a bit of traveling and the prize money would pay for something grander than we have planned (e.g., overseas!).
Maybe I should dream big and get a place with some acreage and water, the kind of place where the kids and grandkids would want to come visit us often. Or perhaps get a vacation rental a couple of times a year — once at the beach, once in the mountains — with enough space to have family and friends join us. (The second option sounds cheaper and less of a headache in the long run.)
I’d want to do something special for each of my sisters-in-law and my sister.
I would send my BFF to that cooking school in Tuscany that she dreams about attending someday.
And I think I would somehow get my dad moved up here from his assisted living place in Arizona, so at least some of his children and grandchildren could visit more often than once a year (and we could help manage his care situation this way, too).
And in the “money pit” department, I would get some structural and roof repairs done at our church building. It’s really old, the congregation is mostly low-income and there isn’t money to spare on big upkeep projects.
I’m pretty sure I just spent it all, which means I’m broke again.
Pay off my kids’ college (all three tuitions), invest the rest and then quit my teaching job so that I can find something less stressful. Surely there is SOMETHING out there!
OMG I love the idea of getting one for Pinterest Pinning…I could be all over that. It is ADDICTING!