The on-again/off-again marriage between Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers has come to this - Green Bay has offered Favre $20 million dollars over the next 10 years for him to never play football again. Not for Green Bay and certainly not for the Minnesota Vikings.
So here's the hypothetical (truth be told, I heard this orginally on Ticket Sports AM): Would you take $2 million dollars a year for the next 10 years even if it meant you could never work again for the rest of your life?
Now before you smack my forehead and call me stupid for even asking, think it through - you are not allowed to work in any way, shape or form for the rest of your life.
1. You will have no vocational outlet. You can not even work for free at your church or local school. You can do volunteer work at a non-profit charity if you wish, but you cannot hold any position of any kind. You're strictly a volunteer.
2. You can send your money to missionaries but you cannot become a missionary.
3. You can pursue new hobbies and interests but no one else can benefit from these pursuits. If you learn how to paint, you can't sell your paintings for charity or even hold a showing.
4. You may read all the books you want but you cannot write a book.
5. If you blog, you are not allowed to sell ad space and your blog content will be closely scrutinized. If you are found to have benefited from your own blog then you forfeit the entire $2 mil, including any amount already paid.
6. You may participate in charity walks, marathons, golf tournaments and bike rides but you cannot compete as an athlete, not even as an amateur.
7. Good for you if you learn how to play a new instrument. Just don't play it in front of an audience other than yourself.
8. You may spend the money however you wish but you can only invest your money in certain long-term retirement funds - no day trading!
I think you get my point. You get the money so long as you never work again. I think some people will go nuts from boredom in the first year . . . myself included!
If it were me, I would not take the money.
7 comments:
uhm... yes. i would take it.
i could concentrate on my garden in the front yard and have time to make sure that the succulents in the rock patch don't have time to take over the basil garden.
and i would have time to take guitar lessons from my friend phil. i could finally learn how to play the liz phair song i like so much and play it at parties.
i would master the language of spanish and teach it to my kid. and then i would learn chinese and teach my kid that language, too. i have always wanted to be bilingual.
and then i could adopt a bunch if kids that need some love. from the U.S.A or Manitoba or Uganda... I don't care, I would take them.
and then i would learn how to play tennis, and teach all my adopted kids how to play it. don't know why this appeals to me, but it seems like a good activity.
then i could give my dad, the best dad in the world, some money to make his model trains even more kick-ass than they already are, and my adopted kids could travel whenever they wanted to go see Grandpa's trains blow up whenever they wanted.
and i would give my husband a drum set in the garage, or any other place that he wanted to have it. and all of our adopted kids could bang on it also.
so much to do, so little time.
geez. i would never be bored. i could find all kinds of ways to make the arrangement work.
Could I use the money to hire Brett Favre as my cute new personal assistant, and let him do all the work (especially heavy lifting) for me?
As long as hobbies are allowed, I think the answer is obvious. I could definitely amuse myself for fifty or sixty years without turning a profit.
I wouldn't do it either, but trying it for just two months would really ROCK!
Thanks for the thought provoking post...At first I thought I would definitely take it. Be a stay-at-home-mom with limitless spending! That would rock! But seriously, for the rest of my life...I think no matter how many hobbies I had and how many "fun" things I did, I really couldn't be fulfilled without feeling some greater purpose. Now if I could be a missionary, that would be a different story. :-)
Oh sweet mother of all that is good and decent, YES!
I can easily amuse myself for ten years with just the books and other hobbies that I can't get to NOW.
I'd sign the contract before they left the room.
Sorry it has taken me some time to get back to you . . .
Hey RT,
You'll also have to hire a personal assistant to help you keep track of it all!
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Hey Nat,
Yes, you can hire Brett Favre . . . but only if one of his responsibilities is to play catch with me!
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Hey Lawn,
That doesn't surprise me about you! ;)
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Hey Michelle,
I'm with you - I'd have to have a 'higher calling' or else I'd feel like a bum . . . no offense to purpose-driven bums, of course!
But I think I'd get a lot of joy out of "spontaneous generosity."
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Hey Michael,
I think the majority of people would agree with you.
Thanks all for stopping by,
W
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