Opening my mind to money

Tread pointed out something that's going on over at Millionaire Mommy Next Door. MMND said:

“For the next 30 days, I'll open my mind to receive increasingly more money. On day one, I'll decide how I'd like to spend $100. On day two, I'll double that amount to $200. Day three, double again and I'll have $400. And so on, doubling every day for the next 30 days. I'll list how I'd like to spend every penny, with no repeating of items during my month-long spending spree.”

I decided to do a modified version of this exercise because, well, I'm both behind already and impatient. I decided to do the listing of things all at once, and then think about them each day instead.

The most challenging part for me was the “no repeating of items”. I like to repeat items! But not doing so forced me to think about other possibilities. I had the hardest time deciding on what to do with the mid-range amounts ($6 million to $838 million). The lower end amounts followed my pre-existing plans (for the most part) and the higher amounts were easy to think of things that I could help with.

Overall, I enjoyed the idea that each coming day I would have even more money to spend. I'd done a similar exercise before (what would I do if I knew I would receive $40,000,000 every single year) but that made it too easy to avoid the specifics. This was more interesting.

Here is my list:

$100 - groceries

$200 - new clothes & shoes for my son

$400 - massages for the three of us + a really big tip

$800 - the next 8 stocks on my list

$1600 - visit pyramids in Mexico with my husband

$3200 - some kind of flat screen TV thingy for my husband (but still no reception :P), with an entertainment center to make it & the other electronics look uncluttered & nice

$6400 - media server (so that we can get rid of our CDs)

$12,800 - treasury bonds & tax liens

$25,600 - trip for all three of us to Antarctica

$51,200 - college fund for son

$102,400 - pay off house with money to spare

$204,800 - trip wandering around with world for a year (at most)

$409,600 - to retirement funds (accompanied by us retiring)

$819,200 - to family, via them winning a mysterious “prize”

$1,638,400 - property + a small house somewhere more sustainable (probably in Pennsylvania)

$3,276,800 - vacation home in Kauai

$6,553,600 - dramatically exceed savings goal #1

$13,107,200 - for male birth control research

$26,214,400 - to Big Brothers, Big Sisters

$52,428,800 - to state-funded animal shelters

$104,857,600 - for diabetes research

$209,715,200 - to Peace Corps

$419,430,400 - directly to individual residents who are still struggling in New Orleans

$838,860,800 - for kidney cancer research

$1,677,721,600 - to Hospice of the Valley

$3,355,443,200 - to a non-profit called Aliamos

$6,710,886,400 - to endow scholarships for students who are struggling to pay for college even though their parents make over the limits for financial aid

$13,421,772,800 - to pay off 1/8 a percent of the U.S. national debt

$26,843,545,600 - to develop alternative, renewable energy sources

$53,687,091,200 - lobbying to eliminating lobbying from the U.S. political process (yes, irony abounds)