What would be a "life-changing" sum of money for you?

[mauvish]

Traitors s1 made me wonder this. The finalists all talked about the prize (somewhere betwen 35-40K each) being a "lifechanging" amount and I wondered, would it really change their lives? Or is it hyperbole?

So then I wondered what amount of money truly would change a person's life? Obviously it depends so heavily on which stage of life you're at, whether you're in debt, etc etc - but how much money would actually be LIFE-CHANGING for you, as opposed to just "nice to have and treat myself and family"?

Me - I am very lucky in that I'm older, I don't have any real "needs" that would be fixed by a particular sum of money, no desire to move house etc, so I don't really have a "life-changing" amount. (I can think of plenty of things I'd treat myself and family to if I won a million quid but that's different in that daily life wouldn't really change!) But in the past, it would utterly have changed my life if I'd suddenly got enough to be able to pay off the mortgage and work part-time instead of full time for the rest of my career. I suppose maybe now, if I were in that situation, somewhere between £250-500k? A lot more than 40K!

DH and i have thought about this a lot £150,000 to pay off mortgage but would make minimal differance to life.

£500- £600,000 + equity in this house could get us decent sized detached house (SE) - but no difference to day to day life.

We are in our 50s with one civil service pension - so £1m + means we can go pretty part time and bridge point to pension.

So that!

But I hate working. Truly.

The only job I'd do happily would be some sort of animal rescue, which pays next to fuck all.

It's great that you could change your life with £40k, but I could not 🤷‍♀️

I've thought about this a lot before.

I reckon, bear with me:
£30k would be nice, pay debts off, have a holiday.. but you couldn't quit work or move home.

£150k would be amazing, but again, pay debts ,have holidays, pay a mortgage perhaps, but you'd still need to work and earn money etc. but you might be able to set up a business.

Now £1.5Million... that could be truly life changing, investing, property, landlordship, getting an income that you don't have to really work for, holidays, no debts. That WOULD be a life changing sum.

Does that make sense?

So difficult to know!! The thing is, I'd like to be able to set up a business /charity if I win mega on euromillions for eg and I'd like to be able to help various relatives out and donate money to certain causes etc.

But I love the idea of £10,000 a month set for life on the lottery! Surprisingly!

£69k to help me with my career.
otherwise an extra £100 a month would do it right now.

500,000 would pay off both mortgages and school fees.

I could then work part time.

So all of that would be life changing for me.

Mortgage is paid off, so as long as we bring in more than say 15k a year take home, we're fine.

In terms of 'everything we could ever wish to do'

1 million =10 fast cars
5 million = five mansions
1 million = Michelin star every weekend
3 million = enough big holidays every year

Say 10 million?

But isn't the point of life changing to be life changing? Anyone can do another job, you don't need to come into any money to do that? People do that all the time, that's just normal life. To me money buys freedom, 40k might be nice, but it's not freedom. 40k is a car.

1 million so we could buy a house with some land and give our current house to DS. We could draw our pensions which are pretty decent defined benefits ones.

£500,000 would allow us to have an upgraded lifestyle where we are. A few frivolous house and garden renovations, nicer cars, fancier holidays, premium seats at the theatre.

£3-4 million would allow us to make my dream relocation. Call that £5 million so that I could give the children each a lump sum big enough to change their lives.

I think probably £300k which would be enough to pay off the mortgage.

I wouldn't really want to stop working or work less, I don't really work for the money (though it's nice).

We'd be able to go on slightly nicer holidays though and not worry about the cost.

40,000 would be great, and mean we could achieve our goals a bit quicker. 400,000 or upwards would be life changing.

😂

Well about £60,000 would pay off all my current debts including mortgage, which would make me feel like I had more options in terms of work.

Probably £250K to £300K. Enough to buy us a peaceful bungalow outright. Then my husband could retire and we'd be able to manage on his occupational pension. I just want us to have our own home; no rent, or mortgage. Somewhere that can't be taken from us.

£10k would clear our loan and credit card debts, freeing up a significant sum of money each month that we could put towards holidays, meals out etc. so anything upwards of 10k would change our standard of living.

Depends what you'd call lifechanging!

£75k would let me do all of the household improvements that I'm having to tackle piecemeal.

£100k in a high-interest account would contribute enormously to giving both of my children a decent chunk of deposit when they are older.

£150k would mean I don't need to worry about autistic DS's secondary school years.

£350k would pay off our mortgage.

£1-2m would let me pack in work and not worry about my next job (I would want to keep working).

£3m would let me buy one of the nicest houses in the lovely town we are already living in without a mortgage (and keep our current sweet but small house for the kids to live in or sell one day).

So to change ever part of my life that I would change if I had the chance, I'd need about £6m!

£5million.

£50k would do the work that our house needs so we wouldn’t have to put every spare penny into it and could have some treats.

£300k would do the above and pay off the mortgage, so I could go part time and spend more time with the baby.

Any more than that I’m not sure what we would do. Those are the two things I desperately wish I could do at the moment.

I could get a lovely home for 4 or 5 hundred K where I live, so half a million. Then an extra 300k to live comfortably for the years to come.
Oh, go on then - best round it up to a million 😁

I won £10k and it did actually change my life as it was the tipping point that allowed DH and I to put down a house deposit. Life has been very different ever since. I sometimes look around myself and think about that moment.

I’m not sure any ‘normal’ amount would, only a ridiculous amount. Then I’d set up a charity and be the CEO. I’d earn a lot, but give away a fortune.

£50m would be good amount, ideally more.

One million. We already live okay ourselves, but that would go towards ensuring comfortable lives for the DC

We often discuss this. Life changing for me would be never needing to work again so looking around 1.5million. Enough to pay off the mortgage would be bloody lovely though and that would be about 150k, would free up a lot of monthly income

When I was a kid, (I’m pretty old) a million pounds was an unimaginably large sum of money! Now round here it only buys a very ordinary house…
I’d say 10m is now the old 1m!