At this time in your life, how much lottery money would you need to win for you or your spouse to quit their job.

Assuming I’d have to pay privately for health insurance, I’d do ok with about 100k a year take home. Not swimming in dough, but doing ok.

That would be a bit more than I make right now, so it would be worthwhile, if I won that, to quit.

To be living high on the hog, I’d need at least 200k a year – to go on fabulous vacations, buy a big house, hire help to maintain it, etc.

$1.5 million after taxes and I would retire. That’s not some big change in lifestyle either, just being able to retire without scraping by.

@jca So, in your answer you are not talking about a lump sum right? I think I should have clarified that better. I wasn’t thinking yearly, just a lump sum.

Oh, ok. Lump sum needs to be more than a million. There was a worker for the government entity that I work for, about 10 years ago, that won 1 million dollars. I figured it out and with the 20 year payout, after taxes, he was only taking home about 30k a year. 30k is not enough to retire on. If you’re retired and receiving a pension, 30k might be like a little bonus. A little “mad money.” A little “icing on the cake.”

Assuming I’m going to be alive another 40 years (which may be stretching it but I have to be on the safe side), I’d need at least 100k a year so multiply that and that has to be take home. Plus I’d need health insurance. So 100×40 = 4 million. Now in thinking about it a little more, maybe when I’m old and decrepit I don’t need that much annually. Maybe I would invest it so I could live off the interest. So maybe, then, 2 million minimum, post taxes. That’s my final answer, knowing that 1 million is not that much (thinking about the former worker with his 1 million).

It’s an interesting question, but the one thing of which I am certain is that my guess as to what I might think a reasonable sum would almost certainly be too low considering the place in which we live. Inflation is one of those sinister things which if you are not compelled to monitor it constantly will certainly ambush you when you are least able to cope with it. The real estate realities drive EVERYTHING here and the effects are surreal. The fact that I am reasonably well entrenched due to nothing other than that I’m old and got here when things were comparatively affordable, is offset by the financial burdens lumped onto those of my lineage too young to have had the opportunity. So 25 million bucks and hopefully I would never have to worry again about money.

I’d quit my job for $50,000.

I’m applying for my PhD, so I’ll be quitting my job after I get an offer from a school and sell my house.

I’d pay off my debt, pull the little ones out of daycare and have a ball with them until school starts in the fall.

About $25 ought to do it. Net of taxes, of course.

a couple of hundred k would pay off all our outstanding loans and allow retirement.

I would need 1.5 million more than the loan I took out to buy my company so I could pay that off before I walk.

$60k would be enough to move my family to Canada and have enough cushion time to find good permanent employment.

3000€*12*60=2160000€
Though I still would not quit, because I like my profession.

Getting laid off in 2009, I learned a big lesson in frugality. I could easily live on a $50K for a couple of years while I got a new career going.

With $1M in the bank I could retire with a modest lifestyle.

2 million take-home. That’ll be enough to buy a bunch of rental properties, pay off what debt I have (house and 1 car) then still have a good slush fund left.

I want to say something about dreams around “what I would do with my winnings”. It’s involves my experiences during a 3 year period in my life when I literally was making more money than I sensibly knew how to manage. And the big lesson from that period isn’t the obvious one about me being a fool. That little trait (probably) remains intact. Nope, what happened to me made me increasingly uneasy through its growing frequency and by the end, actually had me frightened. What I’m talking about is the number of occasions where I found myself confronted by people in REAL need. And I’m not talking about starving people in Ethiopia, but more about literally tripping over people I knew and cared about who would need money for everything from bail through preschool tuition or rent to stave off eviction. It took me a short time to notice the trend, and I remember having discussions with my wife about how rare these things were back when we were “scraping by”. One day I was sitting at my desk drooling over some catalogs of stereo equipment as the wife readied herself for our trip to the House of Music to drop a planned $2400 dollars of an expected $3000 windfall on stereo components. As we headed for the door the phone rang, and the wife (to my annoyance) ran over, picked up the receiver and with a girlfriend she’d grown up with but hadn’t heard from in years. I stood by the door probably rolling my eyes and feeling irritated unti I noticed that the expression on my wife’s face was growing ever more concerned, until she finally said “Listen, I’ll talk to Stan & call you right back”. It turned out that the woman who’d been a telephone operator fo some 15 years had been out sick for 6 months with a lung infection that had gone to pneumonia and left her permanently disabled. She was a single mother with 2 teenage girls and dead broke. She was 2 months behind in her rent and the landlord was in the process of pulling the plug. She was calling around trying to get help, when a former classmate told her that the wife was “flush”. After listening to this, I asked the wife “How much does she owe the landlord” To which she replied $2400. I swear I hadn’t had a religious thought in years, yet instantly looked directly at the ceiling and yelled “what is this, some kinda test?” The hour required to drive the 50 miles or so to drop off the money was one of the more productive hours of my life, because I came to appreciate the meaning of something that had puzzled me my entire previous Catholic youth, that parable about the rich man, camel and needle, and l’ve been depressed at the thought of it every time it comes up since the day I figured it out, because if there is a God, I know He must look at me and laugh His ass off.

That incident was better than 30 years ago. And only a fool would place a pile of stero equipment on a scale opposite a homeless woman and 2 children and call it “a test”, because the answer is simply forced. So it wasn’t a test, but if anything, a lesson so stark that even a fool couldn’t miss it. And apparently (in my case) that’s what is required.

So the good times of surplus money vanished faster than my youth, optimism and sense of humor. The poor long suffering woman finally expired a few years ago swearing her daughters to make good on her debt. They turned up together at our house and gave us $3000 from her life insurance policy the day before another friend called to see if I could lend him $3000 to cover the deductible on the operations to partially restore his vision. So what’s the big lesson? It’s simple. You really can’t win. The way it’s worked for me, and I can’t explain it, when I don’t have it, nobody’s asking. My great fear is being directly confronted by need when the stakes for me or mine are real.

@stanleybmanly Thanks for sharing such a great story…read every word. If I had not been there myself many times so far, it would be easy to think…ahhh…he made this up or embellished more than a little bit. +5

No it happened and the scary thing is that that sort of thing went away with the money. And I’m not kidding when I say that it makes me very uneasy
to think there might be a downside to a big pile of money. It’s tough to imagine a more just punisment to someone fortunate enough to be allowed the illusion that money would be the answer to all his problems. What is REALLY strange is that I remembered the loan and the music stuff as $1100 and the windfall as 2000. The wife and the 2 girls set me straight

@Seek Do you think Canada will let you in? I’m not asking sarcastically because I have no idea.

I really enjoyed your story @stanleybmanly. It resonated with me too. Not in the same way, but I mentioned here a while ago being so broke in my first marriage. We’d scrimp and save to do work we needed to do on our first house and once we’d got the money, something else would happen that demanded that money. Exactly the amount we’d saved. It happend more than once. We’d save $1000 for floor coverings, the car would break down and require a $1000 engine.

I’m glad you helped your friend. I believe when we can, we should. The stereo would have sounded very hollow if in the back of your mind you’d thought of that woman and her children. Life is very strange at times.

As to @JLeslie‘s question, the figure touted here as being required to retire is AU$1 million. I think that’s excessive, but a good guide. I want to be able to travel, so I’d need money to pay for those travels. I have nowhere near that amount and the likelihood of winning lotto is well…nil. So, I’ll be working for quite a while.

Frankly, I think most of you considerably underestimate what would be required to maintain a reasonable lifestyle in an economy still shifting and doing so just short of violently. There are of course opportunities aplenty to cash in on the ongoing misery and suffering, and increasingly those bone picking “opportunities” are all that’s left for those lacking SUBSTANTIAL assets.

I could easily move to Canada, provided I had the money to do so. They require that you have enough money to support your family for (I think) a year, or have a sponsor who will guarantee you won’t be panhandling.

I have a friend who is extremely well off. The kind of money where you don’t ever have to consider money, period, in your decisions. In the 5 years I have known this friend, I have noticed that no amount of money will make him stop working. It’s just become much easier for him to do what he actually wants to do for work, and has started a couple companies just for the sake of pursuing things that are important to him… Philanthropic companies. It’s an honor to watch him use his money to better the world and the lives of those around him.

My point is… No amount of money would make me want to stop working. Change directions, maybe, but I’m too ambitious to live only for my own pleasure and self.

@Earthbound_Misfit My question wasn’t about retiring, it was about quitting. It can be about retiring if the jelly wouldn’t quit except to retire. Some people just want out of their job, and a windfall might help them do that and get started in a new direction.

@JLeslie, sorry my response doesn’t meet your guidelines. For me quitting would mean retirement. Therefore, I would need enough to survive on. I might do some voluntary work, but I wouldn’t go back into paid work if I didn’t need to. If I needed to do that, then I didn’t have enough money to quit this job.

@Earthbound_Misfit Your answer was just fine with how my Q was written. I was just pointing out I left it open to quit, and not necessarily mean retirement. The way you answered the Q I thought you might have missed it.

I just need enough to pay off my new car and house. Then we could just continue to live on his retirement, military retirement and he’s old enough to receive his pension.
For now. In 10 years we should have paid a huge chunk of our mortgage, enough to pay for a smaller home in NC and pay it in full and the car will have been paid by then.

I’m thinking of quitting work this year anyway but £35,000 would be nice as it would pay off the mortgage.