Talya wrote:
With a billion dollars, many of the above comments are superfluous. College funds, and such, are done by people without a billion dollars because they want to ensure they have the money to pay for the education of their children. Aizle has the right idea about investing well, but you really don't need to budget much for such pocket change items like a university education when you're talking about that much money.
Let's assume one invested terribly, placing all their money in some investment that only returned a stable 3% per annum (if you're not getting double-to-triple that over the long haul, you probably invested poorly). Now, inflation is going to average about 2% barring the inevitable economic collapse, so you're only making 1% once you account for the amount you need to grow your portfolio just to break even.
1% of a billion dollars is 10 million dollars a year.
How would we ever live on that? Oh wait...
"What would you do with a million dollars" questions are actually more likely to return financially responsible answers, because it is very hard to spend a billion dollars, unless you want a few squadrons of fighter jets or something.
I understand what you are saying and agree with it for the most part...
however I am a woman of modest means...I don't need $1billion to be happy...
All I need is to be able to take care of my family and a few friends...throw in a few charities I care about, and I'm good...anything over that will move forward to the future...my grandchildren and great grandchildren will be taken care of. I'll be dead before then so it really doesn't matter to me what they do with the money I hypothetically left for them.