Ten things I'd do if I were rich. Part One

As a possible surprise, the first thing I would do is get my eyes fixed, for they are surely inefficient as they are now.

It seems only yesterday, but is actually about 24 years, when my optician Finn told me my vision was 125%.... what does that mean I asked, secretly proud that at least my eyes were superior, because surely 125% meant 25% better than normal, but apparently all it meant was that I saw things distant earlier and with more clarity than 'normal' visioned folk managed.

Finn told me I should buy special glasses to protect my eyes, as I was a graphic designer and spent all my time on a screen, and being the skeptic that I was, I assumed he was simply trying to sell me glasses (after all he was an optician) so I neglected to spend the money on those special glasses.

Finn developed MS (Multiple Sclerosis) and is now still an optician, but in a wheelchair, whereas I suddenly became short sighted at 45, which is not unusual, but very annoying for a typesetter and designer who still spent hours each day on screen.

In some ways it has been a bonus, for when your eyes are failing, things look blurred, and you learn to look at things amplified and slowly, so you often see things better sighted folk may miss. I work on a screen that is big enough to ensure that I never suffer neck strain because I need to look left to right to cover the whole screen, it's actually bigger than most people TV, so I can get things to look REALLY big when I need to!

Anyhow, that's number one, new eyes, or at least the best improvement that money can buy.

Can they do eye transplants nowadays?

I guess it must be possible, but could I live with someone else's eyes? and I often speak about designers having an 'eye' when it comes to design, would I lose mine if I had someone else's eyes?.... OK that's probably nonsense, but somehow having replacement eyes would seem weird, and as I presume someone would need to die before you got them, and I doubt I would qualify for new eyes just because mine were defective as opposed to blind, the ugly specter of paying someone a heap of money for a dead relatives eyes raises it's ugly head.

Guess I would restrict my improvements to what could be achieved with a laser and money!

Number two would be hiring a staff to take care of my travel arrangements and living necessity's.

Travel would feature extensively in my new life, indeed I suspect I would forever be travelling and probably never arriving at a destination, as I would keep travelling.

So that would need a staff to organize for us, as I doubt I would want to spend my days booking tickets and hotels online, when I could be enjoying myself.

So lets lay on personal assistants for myself and my wife, then we would need a personal teacher for our daughter, who would travel with us, and a security detail because having that much cash and travelling all the time staying in first class hotels and such may attract attention from the wrong kind of people who would want us to give them our money, so yes, we would need a head of security and a couple of bodyguards prepared to take the bullet for us.

Assume we will need a personal trainer to keep us fit, and a chef to cook when we get somewhere.

At this stage I think we had better buy a small jet to move us all around the world, so number three would be a personal jet.

OK, now we are half organised to start living well.

As we traveled we would buy property that suited our needs and catered to our whims, all bought in offshore companies with complicated tax structures to ensure that nobody could attack us financially, so I guess number four would be a well thought our portfolio of wonderful places to vist when you were in town, so to speak.

We would need places in most of the major cities, as well as a couple of farms in fairly remote places to use as bolt holes when the world turned nasty, and I guess that would mean more staff to either live in them and keep them ready for when we chose to be there, or an advance party who would travel ahead of us to prepare.

Now obviously I am talking seriously rich here, in the category that means you have no idea what you are worth and earn income (or interest) faster that you can spend it. So inherently continuing working is a waste of time, and lets assume that I would have no personal goals left to achieve that would occupy my time, so what would I do for my other six things?

You have hopefully guessed that much of the above is tongue in cheek, designed to get us all thinking.

Actually it would be simple for us to decide what to do to occupy our time, for we already know what we will or would be doing.

Providing resources to people who were actually DOING something in Gods Kingdom to fulfill the gospel and bring people to liberty and understanding, and that probably takes up numbers six through ten as we found people to help get things done.

The joy of being super rich is that you could help other people get on with their lives and fulfill their visions by ensuring that THEY do not need to be concerned with funding, for there is nothing more debilitating that needing to spend a major part of your time ensuring that basic living expenses are paid.

So, as we traveled, we would look to see who needed help in doing something good that they were committed to doing.

The basic premise would be that we may well travel in style, and stay in comfort, but would move around with old clothes bought in thrift shops in order to find people who would relate to us as people without knowing that they were being looked at to decide whether they would be suited to getting a steady stream of funding poured into their ministries.

I unashamedly state that MOST of our funding be directed to Christian ministries, however I appreciated that there are many non Christian ministries working in helping the poor and homeless and otherwise disadvantaged people of the world, and they would need funding just as much if need be.

The joy of supporting a multitude of people doing Gods work and freeing people from the daily grind of staying afloat would be ALL the job satisfaction required.

This was started under the 30 day challenge, and completed with seconds to spare for the 12 noon deadline, whioch is 3am where I am! 

With reflection, I have much more to add, so there will now be a Part Two....