December Meme - Day 10

[lunesque]

For today, I was asked:

You are given a life-long stipend of $30,000 a month on the condition that you must stay in the city of your choice for the rest of your life. Do you accept? If so, what city do you choose?

For the first half of the question, it's a complete and total yes. I am a creature of comfort, and to have a lot of money and live in the city of my choice sounds amazing. The hard part, of course, is defining what 'stay in the city of your choice' means. If I wasn't able to ever travel out of the city, even if it's five steps, then I would choose New York, because it's big and sprawling and there's the Met and the Cloisters and Broadway and I would never feel bored.

If it means 'you can leave on day trips, as long as you wake up in your city and go to bed in your city, then I would choose York, England. It's been years since I visited, but it was (and maybe still is) my favorite city. I felt immediately at home there in a way that I've never felt anywhere else before. And it would be awesome to take day trips to London or go up to Scotland for the day.

Master Post

Comments

[nicki]

I wouldn't accept. $360,000 a year every year is a lot of money, but after you buy your fab house and car, what are you going to spend it on? You can't GO anywhere.

(go places is what I'd do if I had lots of extra monies. Also, I have no concept of "stay in one place.")

[laurajv]

I was thinking about this this morning, as I was making coffee. I have lived in the same city for nearly my whole life (not intentionally, exactly, in that I applied to universities outside this city, and jobs outside this city, but got into the university here, and hired here, so here I am nevertheless), and I love this city, but...$360,000 is a lot of money, but it's not THAT much*, and it's certainly not enough to make up for what I would lose in the opportunity to go visit my family and friends who live elsewhere. I don't know what price I'd put on that. Certainly I'd need A LOT of compensation for not even being able to go see my mother (she lives right outside my city; you can walk from her house to the city limits in a few minutes).

* I should note that one's perspective on things does vary, but $360K is right around the 98th percentile in the US, but the jumps in income as you go up a fractions of a percent at that end of things are very large (like, 99th is ~$500K, 99.5th is ~$800K). So woo, being in the 98th percentile, but you still won't have, functionally, enough money to be, you know, actually a Rich Person. Especially if you can't take vacations, which at the 98th percentile are really one of the big perks. (I mean, there are TONS of perks to living on $30K/month rather than, say, $30K/year, and I am not knocking all those others. But on a realistic life level, at $360K, "vacations" are a huge part of "how to use the money that doesn't get used up on necessities".)

[nicki]

Exactly. Right now I have enough money a year to cover all the necessities and occasionally take a vacation, so I don't "need" 30,000 a month, though it would be nice, and I value my freedom of movement more than that.