(OT) What would it be like to be:

[Growltigger]

Originally posted by CNCRaymond:
Always worried about some low life, mudd sucking, bottom feeding lawyer trying to steal your money away through the courts?

Hmmm CNCRaymond, I think you would find that someone other low life, mud sucking, bottom feeding inidividual would need to instruct the lawyer before they could chase you through the courts.

That individual would need to have a cause in action against you so if you have abused, harmed, impregnated, damaged or smegged someone, that is the only way you are going to get sued.

As far as I am aware under the US legal system, you dont get sued JUST because you are rich..

Re cash, I asked a Lebanese private banker once about how much you needed to be rich. He said £5million (about USD7.6million).

Reasoning? you need £1m to blow immediatley on flash house, flash car, holidays etc, you then use £2m to buy a 20 year government bond which pays 7 to 8 per cent a year income tax free. This gives you an annual income of say £150,000 (enough to live on)

You then use the other £2million to do something, buy property, invest, start a business, whatever...

The recipy for a happy life

[dogscoff]

I think I agree with CNC here, having *that* much would be a problem: Therefore I'd build myself a nice place to live, buy all the toys/ gifts I wanted, travel for a few years and make investments to set myself up comfortably for life.

Then I'd like to devote the rest to some kind of good cause. Rather than just give all the cash to charity (although I'd probably give some), I'd like to set up something that I could have a hand in running myself, and that might actually turn into a viable business concern:

-Set up massive renewable energy schemes and sell the power to the national grid.
-Create usable and profitable urban mass transit systems (something badly needed in this country)
-Fund a martian colonisation project
-Fund development of one of those orbital passenger planes. (Hotol etc)
-Invest in airship technology (haven't you heard? Airships are back! http://www.cargolifter.com )
-Invest in affordable housing development on brownfield sites.
-Invest in hydrogen cars and fuelling stations.
-Buy Microsoft and put the Windows code out open source

Oh, and I'd buy Malfador, pay Aaron a huge salary and let him employ loads of programmers to help him get all of our wish list items into SE5=-)

Of course it's easy to say all this, but in reality I'm lazy so I'd probably just sit on the cash and slip into the billionaire lifestyle.