Mental Exercise: If I Have $10 Million In The Bank, What Would I Do?



This exercise is an extension of my earlier exercises on finding my purpose, and the earlier guiding questions was

  • Envisioning My Ideal Life
  • What Makes Me Happy
  • Do What I’m Good At

Today’s question:

If I Have $10 Million In The Bank, What Would I Do?

Hmm – if I have $10 million in the bank, what I would do…I believe generally I’ll put them into very safe income investment vehicles that will pay me income, interest and dividends like clockwork every month or every week. Maybe it’d be 2-3% per annum, and that’s $200K – $300K, divided by 12 months.

More than enough to live and thrive.

On then, onto the more important question, what would I do then? From the interests/dividends only:

  • Take yearly prolonged vacation, say 1-3 months in different parts of the world with my immediate family. And then do it again with the extended family (one of my dreams to take our families some place once per year)
  • Hire a personal trainer and chef to help me lose weight, get in shape and get nice and fit.
  • Workout daily.
  • Go back to the usual work and continue to build Phoenix Rehab and serve the patients and therapists to build flexible and financially rewarding professional lives.
  • Write/publish articles and books, but minus the financial stresses and worries, AND cut back on work to say 6 hours max per day. Diving deeper, on “what books would I publish?” – not just passive income, but really books and courses that helps people to
    • build and live better, more meaningful lives (which will include passive income, but passive income is but a sliver and beginning part of it)
    • be a better human, parent, husband
    • be kinder to themselves
  • I’ll send and pickup my kids from school every time they have school. And stay in with them when they’re unwell. (and be able to do the same for our loved ones).
  • Read, meditate, pray more

These exercises to me are quite fund, because it’s contemplative, and clarifying and clarity bringing. I know I want a simple life and no need for fame or excess – just freedom is what I want. And as I dive deeper, I begin to see that things are “linked together”, eg

  • To become “freer”, one must free oneself of shackles such as working 8-15+ hours per day and at the same time, one must work what pays one best to invest in systems that make one freer, without losing one’s health and relationships – it becomes like a precarious catch-22, because with stress and more than one individual involved can make things more dynamic and stressful.
  • Money and passive income is indeed important to become free, and that’s good, but it’s linked but not entirely co-related with happiness, which is also another thing that’s important to me.
  • But does leaving everything behind and become “happily poor” the solution? Nah, it’d suck when I need to pay medical bills or stuff.

Hence the need to have our cake AND eat it too.

person eating cake

So what I’m sensing is that personal growth is important.

  • So is passive income.
  • So is happiness.
  • So is health.
  • So is relationships.
  • So is productivity.
  • So is purpose and meaning and passion.

Hence the truth remains that:

  1. There is more to life than money and passive income, but we need passive income and money to unlock this “more life” part.
  2. Happiness, health, relationships, productivity, purpose is also part of more life.

More thoughts to this soon.



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