How much money do you need?

Lately I’ve been reading more interviews with millionairs than I usually do. Hmm. That didn’t come out right. Let me rephrase it. Usually, I don’t read interviews with millionairs, but recently I scrolled through a couple. Those were from different people. And by different I mean totally different – background, education, stamina, industry, working life, connections, and so on and so forth.

The only two things which were in common for all of them were:

  1. All of them started of as non-millionairs, and now they are millionairs.
  2. All of them said that as the first step of the way they had to decide what is it exactly did they want.

The first point is obvious. At point X in time, all of them had less than $1,000,000USD. At point Y in time (which occured after point X), all of them had $1,000,000USD or more.

The second point is more interesting though. But simple. All of them said, that one has to clearly see the goal. “I want to be rich” is not a goal. It’s an endless process, and very much vague at that. The goal is more concrete, like “I want to live in a house, which has the market value of $500,000USD” or “I want to owe five Jaguar cars, each of which is valued as $100,000USD”. Setting the goal, they all said, is the absolutely necessary first step.

It struck me as interesting. I am very bad at setting goals. (I am much worse at completing them, but that’s not important right now.) So ,I decided, just for the practice-sake, to set a goal.

I was thinking about all the wonderful things that I may have, as well as pure cash, tossed things around, and summed it all up. It came up to 2,740,000 CYP (in USD that’s about x2). If I’ll have so much money by the age I’m 30, I won’t have to think about money ever again. Or so I think. Now.

What’s your number?

15 thoughts on “How much money do you need?”

  1. “I want to owe five Jaguar cars, each of which is valued as $100,000USD”

    I am sure this one is easy to achieve – just get a heavy hammer, visit your nearest Jaguar dealer, see the prices under the windscreen and smash 5 of those cars which value is approx. $100,000. You’ll need a calculator to make sure the average is pretty much close to $100,000 though.


  2. I am so disorganised I can’t even estimate. However…

    £600,000to buy a decent detached house
    £30,000to buy a good car
    £30,000to spend on house refurbishment, equipment of my desire, etc
    £1,250,000to invest and find a job for pleasure only
    £1,910,000Total

    Hmmm.. Looks I am the cheapest one! But obviously I missed something important. Disorganised I am.


  3. Lev,

    I don’t mind. Things that I counted in were:

    House: 500,000 CYP
    Cars: 10,000 CYP every 5 years
    Life: 2,000 CYP every month
    Travelling: 3,000 CYP twice a year

    These were summed up for 70 years.

  4. Your mother is right. You need to think about your family too, including kids

    Nope, not in the scope of this question. “How much money do YOU need?”. “How much money do you and your family need?” is a totally other question. :)

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