If I had a billion dollars

As a March Madness follower, I have been following on the excitement coattails of my older brother Neal for years. Every year we do family brackets, and I always lose. Before that, I remember filling out a bracket for my dad's company party and winning a mini flashlight, for getting the worst score out of everyone involved. I was pleased to win anything for filling out my March Madness picks as randomly as I could.

Neal usually gifts a cool prize to the winner and the runner up. He'll mail a shirt, a check, or candy. It's more random than the actual winning team of the bracket. I somehow always fill it quite poorly, but due to my streak, I'm never greatly surprised.

This year, I did three brackets. One is a family ESPN bracket, another is a work group bracket, the third is a Yahoo Billion $ bracket. To win the money, you have to make an almost perfect bracket. BYU lost, so I'm already out of the running for a perfect bracket. Bummer.

I have had some time to count my chickens before BYU dashed my chances of winning. I should have followed my gut and struck them out on the first round. My poor alma mater hasn't been doing very well lately. Anyway, if I'd won, I'd have a lot of things to change in my life.

First off, when you win lots of money, other people believe you owe them money for being such great friends to you. You might owe them money for prior free favors. Maybe even for encouraging you to join the event. How much is enough? If I won a billion dollars, don't I owe my friends and family members a large cut of this money? Can you say conundrum?

Honestly, it would be sweet to come into some serious money not of your own accord. However, the complications of winning all the money you could ever dream of would seriously mess with your life.

What would I do with a billion dollars dumped on me at once?

1. I would pay my tithing. That's a given, then I could do whatever I wanted with the rest. $1 billion minus $100 million

2. Taxes. That's another given. The government is greedier than anyone else when it comes to mistaken entitlement. $900 million minus $334 million

3. $565 million left and I haven't even given any away to my new friends. I have nine siblings and parents and my husband has four siblings and his mom. We'd probably give them some money to help them out. Let's say $300 million. That's $300 million/15 = $20 million each. 

4. $265 million, I should probably give $1000 to each of my coworkers, since they told me to do the bracket in the first place. $265 million minus $20 thousand. The problem with giving people money, is everyone wants a piece and there are always more people coming out of nowhere. Where do you stop? Family, close friends, acquaintances? Everyone needs money.

5. $160 million to give million dollar endowments to 160 different charities. That's $264,985,000 minus 160 million. That's $104,985,000.

6. We'll say $105 million to keep this simpler. We are now down to the last 1/3 of the money I won for nothing. I have 6 aunt/uncle couples and Charles probably has another 4. $100 million divided by 10 is $10 million each to them. I would hope they'd distribute parts of that to my cousins, whom I also love. 

7. $5 million left. I'd put $3 million into an interest bearing account/invest it

8. $2 million. Seriously? That's still a lot of money.  Hopefully we'd make some plans to buy a modest house and take care of some hobbies. We'd probably buy a house and two dependable cars. $500,000 + $50,000. 

9. What do you do with $1 million? Go on a couple trips, buy some serious food storage, donate some more of it.

10. If I had a billion dollars...

 I'd be rich.

What would you do with a billion dollars?