An audience of two

Sunday January 25, 2009

Stop Doing List
Yesterday lunchtime I was keeping one eye on the kids playing when I read a post in Linda Skrocki's blog. The premise of the post is to imagine you just inherited $20M but are told you have 10 years left to live. So while they played I thought about this.

For a start I'd stop putting money in my 401K plan. Doesn't seem much point if I'm not going to live to retire. Instead I'd make sure I had good life insurance.

I'd stop worrying about how I'm going to pay off my oppressive mortgage and HELOC. Or how I'm going to finance my childrens' education.

I'd stop looking at the JAVA stock price. Now that I've got $20 million the fact that all my savings were in Sun stock and are worth a fraction of what I paid for them won't matter.

I'd stop being envious of the Googlers who are getting their underwater stock options revalued. Instead I'd be happy for them; it's nice that when the employees turn things around they will share in the profits, and it's a great motivator for them.

I'd stop buying wines that need to be cellared for 10 years. I'd be able to afford mature wines at auction.

I'd stop complaining about the screwed-up US healthcare system. Maybe.

I'd stop accumulating vacation and actually taken a real holiday. I'd stop dreaming about visiting places like Australia and actually be able to do it. For once I'd stop staying with friends and family and stay in hotels for a couple of weeks. It's been 20 years since we last did that.

On the other hand, what if I had the 10 years to live, but not the $20M? All of these would just be wishes, nor realistic goals. After all, the chances of me getting $20M are next to zero, but the chances of me getting cancer or hit by a truck are real. In which case I should be playing with the kids, not just watching them play.

So really the first thing I should stop is typing this.

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