If Someone Gave You $100,000, What Would You Do With It And Other Money Questions

Have you seen the money related conversation starter cards circulating in the social media lately?

It is the Financial Service Council NZ teaming up with Hatch investment platform who brings us these downloadable cards that each have a money related question to answer.

I thought I’d do a post series of personally answering a few of these questions in each post and inviting you to share your own answer to the same question in the comments! You can download your own set here.

Who is the best at managing money in your household?

I am. I’m not even trying to sound arrogant, but I am clearly.

My partner doesn’t have massive interest, and like I have mentioned in previous posts, our finances are separate (if you don’t count 3 joint accounts which are our mortgage account, account where our mortgage is paid from and one joint savings account).

We support each other financially but each of us kind of does our own thing, while being respectful to each other and to the needs of our family as a whole.

I manage my money better in a sense that despite my quite a bit lower income, I have always money for bigger bills, have higher savings, invest and in general I’m on top of my money matters.

My partner just kind of wings it because he can due to higher income.

I wish he’d start to manage his money like I do, but he’s not very interested, and for now it works.

He has gotten better over the years, now he has savings, whereas previously he had nothing saved, so that’s great!

But when it comes to our mortgage for example, I’m in charge and technically only ask his opinion out of courtesy. We both know it’s just better that way!

How old do you want to be when you retire?

I think I’d be happy to start to retire when I’m 60-65.

Early retirement has never been on the top of my priority list, if I’m able to do something I’m passionate about I imagine I would keep doing it as long as I can and want.

This might change as the time passes, of course!

But to not want to fully retire my working conditions would have to be pretty flexible.

I’d love to be able to take time off as I want and work when and where I want, especially as I get older.

So maybe I will end up retiring as an employee early but keep working as a freelancer or a consult so I can better choose when I work.

But time will tell!

If someone gave you $100,000, what would you do with it?

It’s funny that I used to think that $100,000 was a huge amount of money.

I’m not saying that it isn’t a lot, and that it can’t make a difference in your life, but it wouldn’t make as big of a difference as I once thought it would.

After all, there is a lot of people who make $100,000/year, and a lot of dual income families where the combined income in the household is over $100,000.

Anyway, if I received $100,000 today, I would put it towards our plan to rebuild our house.

At best it would take away a good few years of saving for it. But it still wouldn’t cover the whole cost of it and we would either need to add to the mortgage (which we don’t want to do) or keep saving.

Okay, let’s be honest, I would definitely put most of it towards the new build, but would do something nice with some of it!

A little travel, a better car (electric, or at least a hybrid), couple of massages, treat something nice for the kids… But most of it towards the new build so we can have our dream home finally!

You can find my other money talks posts here.

I’d love to hear your answers to these questions in the comments below!