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Comment by retro64 | Hacker News Reader

He may not have had a concept of what $30 million really is. I know I don’t, even at my age.

If he has his needs met, what does it mean to him to have his needs met more? I know logically this can be worked out that lots of money buys lots of comfort, but thinking back at that age, I personally didn’t know squat about the value of a dollar. I grew up with less money than most of my peers (not “food insecure poor”, but “all I got for Christmas was cloths and 1 small toy poor”) but never thought about it. I just thought my parents were careful spenders.

However, to your point; where were the adults in the equation?

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>He may not have had a concept of what $30 million really is. I know I don’t, even at my age.

I would be shocked if he had any concept at all. Most adults have no concept of what it means to have that kind of money which is why most lottery winners are broke within 5 years of winning the lottery. You literally can live an upper middle-class/lower upper-class lifestyle without working another day in your life off that interest alone.

Point taken, and I'm not trying to pick apart your post with pedantry, just curious how the numbers come out. 2% gives you 600K/year. If you go with the retirement fund concept of spending "only" 4%/year, that's 1.2M/year. I don't know how you're defining "upper middle-class", but I'll bet most would define it much lower than that.

Finally, a money market fund at 0.5% has an annual yield pretty close to what I make working 40 hours/week. And in my opinion, we live pretty well on what I make in an expensive city like Seattle.

All that, of course, assumes that one does not lapse into lottery winner syndrome because one doesn't have a concept of how much money $30 million is, therefore views it as a bottomless pit of cash, and blows it all on velvet Elvis paintings, bad business ideas from your cousin, and "helping" out your meth-head sister.

All of that assuming assumes the $30 million dollar offer is real. And I'm convinced a vending machine idea is worth a couple of orders of magnitude less than what is claimed.

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