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wherethefmi wrote:I wonder how many houses you could buy in MI with a million?
At this point from what I have heard on the news, all of 'em. Try that, buy them all and you will own the state of Michigan, revoke the speed limit and charge $50 a week to drive however you want. You would make your money back from this board alone.
or you can buy a green dress, but not a real green dress, that's cruel.
I am going to go against the grain with one point, I wouldn't pay off the mortgage, sure put it aside in a safe investment so you know it is covered, but a mortgage is the cheapest money you can have and it maintains your credit score.
Pay any and all other debts.
Invest in a nice cross section of programs, buy a couple of rentals, then lean any future rentals on the first owned properties. Gaining tax benefits and keeping the whole deal away from your family residence.
Buy a cool car but not a supercar, my choices would be a E39 M5 and a 69 Mach 1 Stang for sunny weekends
Fit out the garage of all garages. Saving money on going to specialists just for their equipment.
Take the wife on a wonderful vacation, EVERY year.
Oh and Gloat a lot
Sell the house, pay off everything, buy a nice cool car, and move to Costa Ricca and retire. That million will go a long way down there. 
Seriously, I would pay off everything, house and all. It is amazing how much money you have when you have no debt payments. Set up college for the kiddies, and invest the rest in good growth mutual funds. Keep your day job and live like you do now. By retirement age you will be set. Get you a nice motor home and trailer for the car of choice and travel the country cruising and racing when and where you want.
Heck with paying everything off. Take the check, move to Costa Rica, cash the check and live like a king.
I would probably use it all to buy "toys".
We have no debt, mortgage was paid off 20 years ago. And we are both retired with a very comfortable retirement income so it 's "toy time".
Pay my parents back for paying my college tuition for 4 years, buy a small house so I can move out of my apartment, then invest the rest.
And maybe buy a used S2K and a turbo kit 
Hal- you are the man. Congrats!
Dr. Hess, I'm in. I think the big problem is getting those steam turbines built cheap- we probably need to build a few million 2 kw machines. I'm thinking they could be built en masse for $20k each? Then again- we have a near zero maintenance solution with photovoltaic panels already in place. Yep, they cost a bit more, but they are already in production. 5kw grid-tied systems are around $40k with inverters etc.
Brust, you're missing a big bit of how I see it. First off, the ORC's are totally sealed, zero maintenance and don't use steam, but freon as the gas, thus the need for a gas turbine engineer to design a system with the turbo blades and stages optimized for whatever freon is cheapest and/or least likely to be under attack by some enviro-wackos. I had an 'ah-ha' moment a couple weeks ago. The whole turbo-generator system needs to be one single component. There should only be sealed electrical connectors, freon in and freon out lines, and the units should be "stackable" so if you need 10KW, you plug two together. A 7KW generator at Sam's is one large with a Honduh motor. I see no reason an ORC generator should be any more, mass produced. A Garrett turbo cartridge is three bills installed. How much more complicated can it be than that? The turbine side needs to be multi-stage to get the efficiency from the system. Blade design, materials, number, etc., all needs to be optimized by someone that knows what the heck they are doing. The magnets and coils can all be in the same housing, eliminating the need for any type of seals on the turbine. It might even work to put the magnets on the outer edge of the turbine wheels, or maybe cast the magnets as part of the blade design to cut complexity.
These 5KW units should be 220V, just plug them in, with a master/slave for phasing. That way, you could plug them into the grid and get the phase off of that, or plug another one in daisy chained and use the phase off the previous one.
Photovoltaic panels are not zero maintenance. One problem is that they last 20 years, and the price break even is... wait for it... 20 years. For various reasons, the price of photovoltaics has not dropped several orders of magnitude along with everything else made from silicone. Also, the efficiency isn't all that great.
You can buy an off-the-shelf ORC system now. It is just very, very expensive and it doesn't need to be. It's just a turbine and a generator in a sealed can, like a compressor in your refridgerator, which the Chinese are turning out for nothing. I only say to outsource the production to China or India because we have zero ability to innovate or produce anything in this country at this time. Maybe after Great Depression 2 has turned the corner and trade barriers are put up to force us to hire Americans to produce things so they can pay taxes, then we can build it here, but today, it would have to be sourced overseas.
My goal is about a grand per unit, cost. Oh, and no true world changing idea ever profits the person who came up with it and did all the work. Just the way it is. There are plenty of examples and damn few exceptions, if any. So, that's why I say Berkeley it, just sell the things at cost to anyone that wants to cut their electricty bill from $350/month (or more, wait for it) to $0/month for only a two large investment in the ORC unit, a solar collector, pump or two and a radiator.
Yeah, the efficiency isn't great, but photovoltaics are available now. As for the ORC turbines, I'm no expert, believe me, but I don't believe that you can use a garrett cartridge and just call it good. Look, my ME degree is from the Coast Guard academy where oceanic navigation skills were as important as thermo, but the steam turbines we learned about were pretty traditional turbine looking. My box is pretty little as far as knowledge goes. Shoot.... I fly planes now and haven't even touched ME since I stopped wiping oil off a Fairbanks engine, but I think those turbines are expensive, and HUGE. I can't name a manufacturer who makes a domestic sized steam turbine. There's got to be something out there, but I dont' know. Now if we could get the same characters who copy the t25/t28 (use that as your search on ebaymotors) to make us up a 3-5 kw turbine/gen set, we would be in good shape.
Oh, and there's no waiting for it in Hawaii, I have plenty of friends who are paying over $400/month. Luckily solar hot water takes care of 1/3 of it, but still---- tough. Let's not pretend that the maintenance is zero though.... PV panels are pretty low (especially with no batteries), and the turbine is going to require lube (loooobe).
in seriousness. If I had $1m I would pay off my debts, then invest a bunch with Vanguard. I'd also look at realestate. And then, I'd turn to some low dollar Venture capital deals. Fun fun,
Just make sure the check clears before you do anything rash.
Rental real estate can be a very good way to go, you just have to be able to 'crystal ball' things a bit. For instance, you don't want an apartment complex in an area where there is a good chance of the 'hood sliding downhill over the next 10 years or so.
Post tax will be, what $635,000 initially?
So you pay off the $250,000 house that is 1,000 miles from where you work.
You are NOT going sell the MI house until something comes of the economy in this hell hole, so you either have a vacation home (Nothing like vacationing in Detroit, homes) or you rent out the Angry abode, but being a remote landlord sucks. You can pay a property company to maintain and service your rental but you need to trust them pretty well.
You have two options with $385,000 after tax: Buy an airplane to fly into work or buy a house near work. Regionally I bet you can find something similar to your $350,000 Michigan house for $550,000... OR you go backwards into a $200,000 McManorhome leaving you just about $135,000, $45,000 for each of the kids college funds leaves you $45,000. Which means you can afford to buy a C6 Corvette. and take a trip up the coast with the missus.
Brust, the ORC systems out there now are sealed and maintenance free, like the compressor in your refridgerator. Ten years of life span would be nothing. Use a brushless generator. Turbine bearings can be conventional with Lotus Magic Transmission Lube (Mobil SHC630, fill and forget for industrial equipment) or air or magnetically suspended. I only use the automotive cartridges as an example. The HP is similar, size is similar, so costs should be in the ballpark if mass produced. Again, we're not using steam, so the dynamics and materials change.
Anyway, it will never happen. You can't tax, regulate, control and exterminate if everyone produces their own energy requirements from (gasp) sunshine. We'll keep paying Obama Oil and Energy Corporation for eternity.
I sailed with some USCGA graduates.
Keith wrote:If I had a million dollars, I'd buy an exotic pet. Like a llama. Or an emu.
Oddly related to AC's original suggestion of hookers and blow! So disappointing. I've seen them live ~10 times. 
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/884335/steven_page_of_barenaked_ladies_ar...
As to the original question at hand, given the current marketplace, I would:
1) Pay off your mortgage (yes, I know it's cheap money, but for some folks, like me, owning your home outright is a huge goal). 2) Buy lots of rental property. There are very few assets you can buy with other folks money (rent). And real estate is set for a great rebound.
dyintorace, you need to post the followup - the charges have been dropped: http://www.canada.com/Health/Charges+dismissed+against+Steven+Page/1554871/story.html
I first saw them open for the Tragically Hip in 1991 :) Page was also dating a girl in the UWO faculty of music when I was studying there in the early 90's, I think.
A cool Million?
dont have any outstanding bills to think of...
A million bucks wouldn't last long if you start buying houses cars etc. You have to store, pay tax on and upkeep all that junk. Best option is to pay off the house, debt, secure the kids college funds, and save the rest. Some safe investments sure, but use the cash to never need credit (and pay finance charges) again. Your annual salary is now 100% disposable! You could live comfortably without much worry, enjoy a nice car, annual vacations, perhaps a small vacation home and a boat. The worst thing you could do is risk the million trying to make 10 more!
Still after paying off his current mortgage he will be left with less than half a million after Unkle O's cut. He lives 1,000 miles from work. Still needs a home after he pays off the other house.
Keith wrote:dyintorace, you need to post the followup - the charges have been dropped: http://www.canada.com/Health/Charges+dismissed+against+Steven+Page/1554871/story.html
I first saw them open for the Tragically Hip in 1991 :) Page was also dating a girl in the UWO faculty of music when I was studying there in the early 90's, I think.
I hadn't heard that in the news. I guess that's typical. Society enjoys reading about folks and their issues, not when their issues go away!
Regardless, it is sad that Page has left the group. His voice really added to their music.
That said, I'd go see them live tomorrow if I could!
I love it, it's the GRM board but a million bucks isn't worth bupkis
You can definitely get a rental property with a half million. Heck, in this market you should be able to pick up a number of of them, especially with a bit of help from the bank. It might not be enough to quit your job on, but it'll certainly open up some fun money over a long period of time, or pay for the kid's college off the income.
A million dollars isn't 20 million, but it isn't twenty thousand either. You can't leave work, but it's not like it's going to make a couple minor changes and that's it
You should be able to end up with paid-for houses in SC and Michigan, the MI house rented out, the kids' tuition already set aside, and your favorite charity a hundred grand richer. That'll leave you able to have all your wages as disposable income. Don't live like a lottery winner, andyou will be significantly richer.
Dr. Hess: No way are you gonna do it for $1M, that sounds like a quarter-billion-dollar project and it's close enough to cutting-edge that it would certainly be better off to have the production facilities over here.
Barenaked Ladies for the win!! Very nice Keith.
I actually was going to post something from that song, oh well.
A quarter bil if the government is directing it. No, maybe not. Probably twenty bil. A quarter bil if MBA's are directing it for corporate America. I think one mil as follows:
Fluid/turbine Engineer for one year: $100K gEEk: 50K Harbor Freight: 20K Machinist for prototyping: 40K Prototypes: 100K
Double those numbers for "fudge factor." Throw in an extra couple hundred for misc. That should get you the prototype design, Mark 3. The first one never works and is an experiment in construction techniques. The second one always has issues. The third one usually works. At least that's the way I always seem to build stuff. If I can't get an engineer to design a freon based turbine in the 5-7KW range for a hundred large, I've got the wrong engineer working for me. Same with the gEEk. I figure the gEEk needs to do less work because generator design should be pretty off-the-shelf. It just has to integrate with the turbine.
Note that "profit" and other corporate overhead like executive pay and car allowances are excluded. That's how MBA's blow 250 mil on a 1 mil project and how the feds would blow 20 bil on it. Changing one line of code in an esoteric report gets billed 100-150 hours today. That's MBA's at work.
MCarp22 wrote:
Or, barring that, invest in precious metals:
Lead, Brass, Steel, etc...
