Topix Questions 3 "Billionaire" & 4 "Generations: Similarities and Differences" of 424

 

Question 3/424:  You just became a billionaire.  What will you buy for yourself?  And for others?

So, I’m going to be honest in that I don’t feel like I am financially savvy enough to even know how far a billion dollars can be stretched.  I’m not even sure, without searching online, how to write out a billion dollars in numerals.  I know, my first and foremost, would be that I would buy a house.  Ideally, the house I want would never cost more than $250,000 which is pretty much a drop in a bucket of a billion dollars.  I would probably also go ahead and buy myself a brand new car, just so I know I’d be set for a while, which again I would try not spend more than $20,000.  I do also have some debts I would need to pay off but even then we’re still well under the $500,000 mark so there’s still a lot of money left in this imaginary bundle of cash.

A lot of people often say that if they won the lottery they would pay off their parents’ home and buy them new cars, and I would totally do that if my parents’ house wasn’t already paid off.  Though my mom would probably appreciate a nice new car so I would buy her one if that’s what she wanted.  In addition to that, I would want to plan a trip to go and see all of the places I’ve always dreamed of.  I wouldn’t want to travel alone, though, so there is probably a good handful of friends I would ask to go on the trip, all expenses paid, assuming they could get the time off of work.  Again, I don’t know how far this money could be stretched so I’m going to assume that I couldn’t afford to make up for their lost earnings if they had to quit their job to go on this fabulous trip that I would also have to pay someone else to plan because travel planning is just not a skill that I have.

I would also want to donate money, especially if the billion dollars was something I was just gifted, it would feel wrong to spend it all frivolously or selfishly even though admittedly that is the first thing that comes to mind.  I’m not sure which charities or organizations I would choose to donate, too, mostly because a lot of research needs to go into that to make sure where you donate to is actually using the money for the reasons they claim to.  It’s sad that in today’s world you really never do know if when you donate to a company that they’re actually going to do what they promise to do with donations.

I do have a couple of friends who could definitely use some help be it finding a better place to live, or more reliable transportation, and I would be more than willing to provide that for them just to know that they’re in a better situation then they are currently.  However, for the most part, I feel like I am one of the least “flush” as they say of my group of friends.  I feel like most people in my life, even if I were to offer them money or assistance, they would all tell me no and that I should keep it for myself and finally get the things I have been working so hard towards since I was 17.

Once I was done doing all of those things I listed above, I would hope there would be a decent chunk left over to invest, whether it be in a long-term retirement (that I currently know nothing about) or just in stocks that are less risky than others to ensure I have a long standing hold in something for the future.  I’m not really interested in playing the “game” of the stock market, investing in up and coming companies and then pulling out before things plummet, but I am willing to invest in things that are more concrete, and very unlikely to ever cost me money in the long run.

But at the end of the day, the idea of ever even having six-figures in my bank account seems like such a far-fetched idea, it’s like asking me what I would do if I woke up and was a fairy for some reason and could do magic.  I have no idea what I would do with the money, or how fast I would move to spend any of it since I’d be so worried about wasting it or making a financial mistake that would burn me down the road.  But, it’s nice to dream and imagine what it might be like to wake up one day with a billion dollars in my bank account.

Question 4/424:  How are people of different generations similar to, or different from each other?

I feel like I don’t really know how to answer this question.  I’ve never really understood societies obsession with defining groups of people based on when they were born or raised in.  I do understand that certainly people who were born in the 1940’s will have very little in common with people born in the 2000’s.  However, when comparing people born in the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s I just don’t see why it has to be this big hoorah about trying to draw lines in the sand to divide them.  The fact is, I was born in 92, my brother was born in 89, my sister in 88 and while that divide may have felt cavernous when we were kids, once we’re adults it all kind of melds together.  Additionally, despite when we were born, we were raised by a dad born in the 50’s and a mom born in the 60’s and those two adults had lots of influence over everything we did.

My boss, who was born in the 70s, always likes to pretend that I’m “too young” to understand references he’ll bring up, but at the end of the day most pop culture references he refers to I do understand because – again – I had parents, who showed me their favorite things from childhood and also things they learned to love as we were growing up.  So, unless the fact is about sports (which no one in my family was interested in) I probably do know the movie, actor/actress, show, song, or band you’re referring to.

If anything I think it’s more likely that people of an older generation have less interest in learning about up and coming things than the younger generation is to learn about things from the past.  But even that statement is so subjective to who you’re talking to.  I know plenty of people my age who love the idea of watching old black and white films and immersing themselves in the culture of the olden days, and I know plenty of other people my age who have no interest in romanticizing the past and only want to watch, read, or listen to the most new and popular things going on.  That has nothing to do with their generation, and everything to do with their personality.

Even if you’re less interested in common interests or pop culture, even morals and work ethic I feel have little to nothing to do with the generation you were born into and everything to do with how you were raised.  I don’t understand this common mentality of just assuming the next up and coming generation is full of entitlement and laziness.  Even if it is true, why do people like to just blame it on the young and ignorant instead of where the blame should truly lie which is with the parents who raised those lazy, entitled kids.  My upbringing, was rather unique in that my parents were both self-employed for most of my childhood and we lived on a hobby farm.  So when people used to throw around that Millennials were lazy or ungrateful or entitled, it bothered me because that wasn’t my experience.  Even friends of mine who weren’t raised by self-employed parents on hobby farms, most people I know and am close to are hard working individuals that pride themselves on a job well done.  Not to say every person I know from my generation can be labeled that way, but a good majority can be.  The upcoming Gen Z, too, there is a lot of people of the up and coming generation that are certainly hard working and care about real issues more so than most people in my generation.

I’m not sure if I answered the question or not, I guess my take on this question and the point of this whole rant is that generations aren’t all that different from one another.  Yes, we’re raised differently and around different things, but ultimately we all have more in common with one another than we have differences, society just likes to really point out where people are different instead of encouraging unity and understanding.  At the end of the day, you are who you set yourself up to be, not the generation you were born into.