How much money do you need, anyway?

Man, I got this one figgered to the penny. I need $4.00 mil. That's it for life.

I calculate with the cost of living adjustments, I would need just that much to survive to eighty-something, and by then I should be good and dead, assuming I continue to follow the American diet and breathe Dallas air.

$4 mil. Anything after that is fluff on my cake, and fluff only makes you fat.

I see these corporate guys/gals making hundreds of $mils and I think, Man, how many zeroes do you need to be happy?

Six? Seven? Eight? NINE! TEN like Gates and those Middle Eastern Princes with their diamond-studded Mercedes?

Damn.

You realize, of course, that zero is a physical representation of a NULL, and that it has no mathematical value or function, other than relocating the decimal. It is, in fact, living proof that man does not understand the universe, because there is no such thing as NULL. God did not create a NULL. He laughs at zero as I laugh at infinity and mankind's infinite ignorance about its own mathematical and scientific dysfunction.

We are wrong, way wrong, and I laugh with God.

Ha.

Therefore, no matter how many zeroes are in your income, it is still a NULL. It is more and more nothing in your offshore bank account.

If I had $4 mil, I'd pay off my house and what little other debt I have and stash back the rest. I would be free to retire, see, that's the point.

I would drive my old Tahoe into the ground -- and for you greenies out there, hush up yo mouf in advance. I know it's a gas guzzler. I figger the faster we burn it, the faster we'll learn it's true value. You only miss it when it's gone.

What was it the Indian said about fish? We'll only worry about over-fishing after we eat the last fish.

Anyway, have you thought about how much you need? What is your cut-off point? Do you have one? If you don't, you'd better figure it out, because you don't want to be one of those corporate greed-olies who think they need bigger and bigger boxes in which to store their stuff.

George Carlin said that: A house is a box with a lid on it in which you store your stuff.

Me, at $4 mil, I open my own local brewery, work in my underpants from home and in my brewery, and if you drink in my brewery, you drink without your pants, because that's how I roll. I drink what I don't sell, and sell what I don't drink.

I will call it Club Garson for personal reasons, and we will play indoor soccer on the off-days. Pantsless.

No garage full of Maseratis and Porches and other unpronounceable cars could ever be better than that.

Is it Porche or Porch? I sit on one and drink and talk to the moon, and on the other I run off a cliff and burst into flames. Which one, tell me, do you prefer?

Plus, my wife is hotter than most rich guy's wives, and she loved me way before I had $4 mil.

In fact, I have no idea why she loves me, but she is gorgeous, and you just can't buy that, now can you.

What's that limit, folks? Where is your cutoff?


- Eric