What I Did With My One Week of Wealth
I swam in it
When my Medium story went viral and dropped an unexpected windfall into my bank account, I asked the question, What Would You Do with One Week of Wealth?
It’s a fair question for a newsletter about income inequality. Unlike many people, who would sooner max out their credit cards than admit they are anything other than solidly middle class, I feel no shame admitting I’m not.
The Medium piece, We Could Learn a Lot About Sex From the Dutch, has now made an astonishing $16,607.68! To put this into perspective, my usual monthly Medium take is somewhere between $1K-$2K.
When you are used to squeezing as much as possible out of every penny, and you suddenly get some extra cash, you have to make some decisions. You might pay off some debt or take a vacation or make repairs on your home.
If a real fortune had dropped onto my lap, or if I had reason to think I could score a viral article every month, I might have made different decisions, but after careful consideration for a couple of weeks, I made my decision.
I fixed my car
I drive an ancient MINI Cooper, which I purchased while I still had a full-time job and was blissfully unaware I would not always have one. My then-16-year-old son had fallen asleep and flipped the nice cheap Neon I owned (he was miraculously fine) and I bought a second-hand MINI with the insurance.
It had become unsafe to drive and I couldn’t make up my mind whether I should fix it, junk it or try to buy a better used car. A new car is out of the question and a used car is a gamble. Since I work from home, I could theoretically do without a car, but I’m already glad I fixed it because now I can make the three-hour drive to visit my daughter and help her get her house ready to sell. My husband generally works six days a week so without a second car, I’m stuck.
Cost: $1,716
I made a lump sum mortgage payment
I could have paid off the house I live in. We’re close to that day already, though, and our monthly interest cost is down to less than $25, so I resisted the temptation.
However, we still own the house we formerly lived in. I couldn’t sell it when we moved in 2008, and have rented it out ever since. Landlording is a nightmare (and not remotely profitable) but my son started living there a few years ago. Unlike literally every other tenant, he always pays on time and never damages anything. It felt really good to drop an extra grand toward the principal. How much time will that knock off? I have no idea. I was a journalism major. A lot?
Cost: $1,000
I bought patio pavers and a small pool
When I was married to my first husband, we bought a house with an above-ground pool. It was surrounded by a deck and I just loved it, but it took a ton of upkeep.
More recently, I’ve coveted my neighbor’s setup. They have an area where each summer they put up a small seasonal pool, and each fall they take it down and replace it with a firepit. They report that these smaller pools require little upkeep as long as you keep the cover on between uses.
We spent something like $600 on patio pavers and then plopped the pool ($400) on top of the new patio. (We initially bought too many and returned some). I didn’t want to have a dead spot in the grass. Our backyard is an oasis we really enjoy in summer, and this enhances it.
It’s rather late in the summer for a pool, but we just hosted the grandkids for a few days and they had so much fun in it that we’re really glad we made this our splurge! Soon we’ll have to take it down but then we’ll enjoy sitting around the fire and that will also be fun.
Cost: $1,000, plus a bit more for pool chemicals and toys
I gave a family member some extra help
My husband and I help a family member each month. This month, I decided to provide an extra $500. We will probably add to that next month, too.
Cost: $500
The rest is going into my old, long-neglected 401(k)
My retirement account has a fraction of what the experts say I should have at my age. I’ve never earned anything close to the median wage, and most of the years I was working, my employer didn’t offer a match. I was the editor of a daily newspaper until 2015 – a job I clearly did for love, not money.
I don’t intend to ever actually retire unless/until my mind goes. I hope to keep writing until the day I die, and will probably have to! Still, I ultimately decided the best use for the bulk of the windfall would be my 401(k). One big argument in favor of this is that I’m 58, and at 59.5 you can borrow money from this account if you have to.
The extra money will be better there than simply parked in a savings account and will be accessible in an emergency in about a year.
Thank you to Janice Hoffan of , who said I should practice dollar-cost averaging. So I’m going to feed it one grand at a time until it’s gone. Perhaps by the time the last windfall money is invested, I’ll have made enough money to keep it up.
Cost: Everything else and maybe more
That’s not the last word
I still have some dental work I will soon need to have done, and it’s important to send my Dutch husband to the Netherlands because he hasn’t been back to see his family since 2017. But we have a very anxious and sad elder dog who I doubt would survive being away from me for two weeks. So we’ll wait a bit.
Cashew was thought to be about 10 when we adopted her in 2020. Her separation anxiety has not responded to any medication, but we love her so we arrange our lives around her. Someday we will not have her anymore, and I’ll go with Harrie to the Netherlands then. He may go without me next year. I’ll miss him, and I’d love to see Europe again, but it’s more important that he go. (He has seven older siblings, so we never have to pay for hotel accommodations.)
Maybe I’ll make more money!
This Substack is growing nicely. I have 54 paid subscribers – thank you to all of you who voluntarily pay! My total number of subscribers is 1.32K. I am hopeful that some of those folks will decide to start paying for a subscription. I don’t want to put anything behind a paywall because I’m committed to making my work accessible to people living in poverty.
On Medium, I have 12,614 followers and 345 email subscribers. I’m a nommer there and run the publication Minds Without Borders.
And, of course, I have a new novel out – The Trailer Park Rules. Although it’s fiction, it’s about a real-life issue of big corporations purchasing mom-and-pop-run trailer parks and then jacking up the rent. The characters in my book mostly don’t do so well when this happens. Neither do people in real life.
You can read the first chapter on this old post: This Free Literary Snack Is Tastier Than A Costco Sample.
So who knows? It’s not impossible that my writing might pull me into the middle class. Until then, I really had a wonderful time daydreaming about the extra money.
I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here or on Medium. or help support my work with a one-time gift. Thanks!
Michelle, I purchased your book Trailer Park Rules. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and decided to donate my copy to our local city public library. I lived in the same house my entire childhood. It was constantly being renovated by my father and never was anything “special” in our suburb near Washington, DC. I suppose we were poor but I didn’t realize it if that was true. But we always had a decent place to sleep and adequate food. I truly admire your openness about poverty.
Yay for swimming and memory making!