Show & Tell: If I Won 10 Million

As I was away over the weekend (boat cruise to Tallinn, Estonia, with a friend) I'm running late with Show & Tell (again). But today I'm staying home from work (well, I went there for an hour but realised pretty soon it wasn't doable) due to a bad cough I have come down with (I always seem to get this very "chesty" cough when I have a cold and I don't want it to develop into a proper chest infection).

Since it's already Wednesday I thought I'd have a look at everyone else's 10 million post from last Friday and pick something I would do too if I won that kind of money (though 10 million in Swedish kronor isn't that much).

It's of course appropriate to start with Erica who was the hostess of the March themes. Hard to pick one but on Erica's list I liked:
- Set up a plan for the rest of the money [not spent on the below], i.e. save and invest some of it

Other things I would do - inspired from my fellow bloggers:
- Celebrate with champagne (of course), the expensive kind, and a party
- Go on a spur-of-the-moment trip to New York or some other cool city (maybe somewhere I haven't been yet)
- Buy a flat in Stockholm OR
- Buy the house we (well, I) have always dreamt of (probably in Enskede) and decorate it just the way we wanted
- If I was living in a house already when I won the money; invest in a green energy solution for the house (solar panels or the like)
- Buy an old house/building in Italy, renovate it and open up a B&B or just use it as a summer house (or maybe have some nice Italian couple run it and keep a couple of rooms for family and friends)
- Treat myself to four-day work weeks and three-day weekends (I like my job too much to stop working) but first I would probably take a sabbatical, i.e. buy more time in a way
- Set up bank accounts and start saving for my (future) children
- Help family and relatives pay off debts or in some other way
- Have more parties (like the one we had when Peter turned 30)
- Sponsor a child somewhere in the world (actually I should do that already; I don't have an excuse really)
- Donate to charity
- Travel a lot and often, maybe back to Africa to start with and maybe Zanzibar
- Buy a new computer, maybe a nice iMac
- Buy a car, an environmentally friendly one in the true sense (i.e. not just a FlexiFuel or similar one)
- Buy a summer house in the Stockholm archipelago
- Buy a lot of new clothes
- Pay of student debts, which many bloggers mentioned

More Pasta for the People

Håkan Bengtsson writes about an interesting experiment in Italy that he thinks should be followed around the world (he read about it in Dagens industri).

A union leader in Italy recently called the low salaries in Italy a "national emergency" and he is supported by pasta producer Enzo Rossi. Rossi grew tired of his teenage daughters wanting money all the time and being used to getting what they wanted. His solution to the problem was to make the family survive on the same amount of pay as his employees at the pasta factory, i.e. 1,000 euro a month. To succeed the family gave up the car for a scooter, reduced their consumption of nice wines and [Rossi] stopped smoking. They only ate out twice a month. After 20 days the money was gone.

His experiment was meant to open up his daughters' eyes but opened up Rossi's about his employees' salaries. He didn't like the experience of running out of money.

So Rossi decided to raise his staff's salaries!

Oxford Wants My Money

The University of Oxford is trying to deal with the hot issue of its future at the moment, boiling down to whether it should stick to the present system or go independent (i.e. free itself from the government's reigns).

However, what caught my attention in the Economist article was that they are expecting me to pay for it!

"If Oxford declared independence, it would lose the £52m undergraduate subsidy at least. Could it fill the hole? Certainly. America's top universities charge around £20,000 per student per year. The difficult issue would not be money alone: it would be balancing numbers of not-so-brilliant rich people paying top whack with the cleverer poorer ones they were cross-subsidising. America's top universities manage it: high fees mean better teaching, which keeps competition hot and academic standards high, while luring enough donations to provide bursaries for the poor. It should be easier to extract money from alumni if Oxford were no longer state-funded."

Well, one day I might make enough money to be able to share it... So far I've chosen to hold onto it tight. When I was reimbursed for water problems while staying in college accommodation I was asked to donate the grand total sum of £250. I greedily rejected the "offer".