A couple weeks ago, Jen Mann, of People I Want to Punch in the Throat fame, posted the lottery question: "If you won the lottery, what would you do with the money?" I answered that I would dump it into investments, then use the proceeds to pay off our house, pay off the debts of my siblings (in annual chunks of the IRS gift allowance, so I don't create more debt for them), establish some scholarships in honor of my mentors, and buy a few houses in the same neighborhood for friends and family so we can all live near each other. Then, I would start buying up student and loan debt at wholesale prices and start forgiving it in IRS gift chunks as well. The economy of the ordinary person in the United States is crippled by debt right now, and if I could improve the lives of a few people, why wouldn't I?
The California Powerball is $127 million right now. If I did all I listed, there would still be money left to buy anything that caught my fancy or to travel to any location I desired. What to do with what's left after that? Start making the world better. And create a fund at every theatre I love to provide an assistant to the costume designer for every production, so that doesn't have to come out of the budget anymore.
I was watching The Home Edit the other day, and I get the feeling that I might be the only person on the planet without a walk-in closet. They have one ordinary person and one celebrity on each episode, and one of the episodes had a Kardashian sister's garage, where she stores her merchandise, supply overflow, her art area, and her kid's cars. Multiple. The kid appears to be within a year of Tiny's age. I'm mystified. Why would a toddler need that many cars? I realize that these aren't expensive toys to people in that tax bracket, but holy bananas. Tiny is thrilled with the Cozy Coupe that was her big birthday present this year. The main attraction is getting in and then getting out again. She's like a cat that way. The next biggest thrill is getting pushed around by Fuzzy "really, really fast." Doing doughnuts is also a big attraction. I'm not sure I would trust her with a motor vehicle of any sort, as she is two years old. I don't think her joy would be doubled with a second little car, although we'll probably set her up with a tricycle next year.
Do we really need more stuff to be living our lives completely? Is there a point where it's too much, even if we do have space for it? I've been considering the question since everything started changing in March and we started slowing down. If I have so much that I can't locate it, what was the point of having it in the first place? What do I really care about, and how am I making what I have and what I do match those values? When things fell apart in the last recession, I was struck by how little all the things I owned could help me. I would never be able to sell them for what I paid, and in the short term, they wouldn't do the important things like preserving our health or keeping my children fed. It's part of why I have been so stringent about staying out of debt as much as I can--there's more flexibility in a lower monthly expense level.
In theatre, we call the running expenses of a show--the initial expenses of building the show, the payrolls of the cast and crew, the payroll of the orchestra, royalties to the creators and producers, printing costs, the rental of the theatre, etc.--the "nut." A highly expensive show like Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark may never make back its nut--someone estimated that the show would have to run for centuries before everyone made back the expenses, but most shows have reasonable enough budgets that they can keep the show going at a certain level of ticket sales. The smaller the nut, the lower the threshold. Part of why some shows run for decades is not only their popularity, but also their relatively low running cost.
As we face these continuing uncertain times, it's time to ask ourselves: what's our nut? How can we make our nut small enough for our show to run and run? I know I want a A Chorus Line or Chicago instead of a Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark. Until we all win the lottery.
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