(© Bonnie Schiedel. Originally published in Chatelaine, November 2005)

It’s everyone’s fantasy: a cash windfall. We asked three readers from different cities, incomes and backgrounds to describe a pretend spending spree. There were a couple rules: no paying off the mortgage or other debts, and no socking the money away in a bank account or under the mattress. In other words, spend, baby, spend!

As it turns out, stuff like “flat screen TV” and “12-carat tiara” didn’t even get mentioned. Instead, juicy, life-enriching experiences—for themselves and for other people—were at the top of the list. And our big-time spenders realized that how they used their imaginary cash revealed a whole lot about themselves and who they want to become. Here’s what they discovered.


The part-time teacher
Andrea Powell, 37
Winnipeg

I love the balance that teaching part time brings, but cutting my salary in half means a few sacrifices here and there--no trips, very little eating out, and making do with old camping and sporting equipment. Still, it's completely worth it to spend time with my two girls. I have no hesitation in giving up that other stuff.


$50,000 Start a reading program
I teach at an inner city school, where many parents work so hard at two or three jobs just to provide the basics. I would start a reading club and give each child a new bookbag, crammed with fabulous books. We'd have pizza lunches for book discussions. Thereâs nothing like getting a kid excited about reading.

$8,000 Go on a romantic retreat
I'd love to surprise my husband with a romantic trip for two; maybe renting a sailboat in the Caribbean, or a few days in Paris followed by biking (and croissant-eating) in rural France. Or maybe I'd just have a hotel room key card couriered to him and I'd kidnap him for an afternoon. Spontaneity is what's missing from my life, it seems; a Saturday afternoon to wander through a trendy shopping area, ending up somewhere fun for a drink; a spur-of-the-moment night out. Doesn't that take you back to the pre-kids-career-responsibility days?!

$5,000 Plan a girls' getaway
I'd take my mom and sister to a city like Montreal or Chicago for the weekend, to shop and spend time together. A girls' getaway would be so fun! They both live nearby so we see each other often, but family dinners with small kids can be so frenetic and we get distracted. This would be time to talk about where we've come from and what we still want to do.

$6,000 Empower my students
I love the idea of doing small anonymous things to help out other people, so I'd talk to the grade 9 students at my school about "paying it forward." Then I'd give each of them $100 and they would decide how to spend it--say, buy materials to create a mural for a local building, or donate to a social agency. How incredibly empowering for these kids to realize they can make a difference in someone else's life.

$12,000 Hire a handyperson
My house needs some upgrades, which we've been putting off; everything from replacing the front light fixture to redoing the bathroom. We always do our own painting and repairs, and instead of spending hours at the home improvement store, and trying to figure what we need and how to it, it would be wonderful to have a fix-it person come in and help us.

$17,000 Splurge a bit
I've gotten very good at buying only practical things, and not spending much money on myself. One of the first things I'd do is replace that durable but nasty blue carpet in the basement that my husband got a "deal" on. Ugh!
A dark room would be amazing. I've always wanted to turn my love of photography into more than just a fun hobby. Install that wine cellar weâve always dreamed of. And impractical shoes! I don't know how much a pair would cost because it's not even on my radar, but they would be fun to have. I'd replace my sad collection of lingerie that doesn't get much attention anymore. Oh, and stacks and stacks of CDs, and an iPod.

$500 Buy a round
I'd treat the regulars at an old pub that I used to haunt when I was in my twenties. I was part of a group that went long mountain bike rides in the winter, and then we'd come into the pub, helmets and all, for nachos and beer. Our wedding party even stopped by for a shot of tequila between the ceremony and reception!

$1,500 Give away groceries
I'd hang around a grocery store close to a university, wait for a group of hungry-looking students, and tell them to fill up their carts--the groceries are on me! I remember so clearly being that age and having to make every penny count. I once ate Kraft Dinner for two weeks straight.

The real payoff:
To be honest, what I crave more than anything these days is time for myself; a lunch out with friends, a free morning to go for a run. I've fallen into a rut where I feel guilty claiming that time. I'm going to get out of this staid (I hate to say "middle-aged"!) attitude, and find some creative ways to have fun without spending a lot of money.
My husband and I have a fabulous relationship, but with two small children, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that we need to invest in each other and our future. We should make time together more of a priority, even if it isn't sailing around the Caribbean!
And I plan to to do a volunteering unit with my students, as well as set up a small-scale reading program at my school. There's a city foundation that funds projects like this, and I'm going to put a proposal together. I'm going to see if my own book club wants to donate books too.


The entrepreneur
Michelle Strum, 28
Halifax

"When I was 23, I opened up a backpackers' hostel with a longtime friend. We're not rich, but the business has been a hit from the beginning. In the past five years we've been able to buy our building, double the number of rooms, add a bookstore and a cafe, and employ four people. Now, we're dreaming about expanding."

$49,000 Build a better neighbourhood
Our hostel is on Gottingen Street, one of the most diverse and multicultural neighbourhoods in Halifax. It's a really exciting community with a lot of energy. But the area also consistently gets a bad name because it's a bit run down. With the advent of big box stores outside the city, a lot of these businesses started to decline. I started a merchants' association to promote the area and get the merchants together, so with this money we could set up a not-for-profit co-op: a grocery store with a laundromat in the back, and a bank machine. Those three amenities are missing right now and I really believe they would create enough interest for other investors to bring their businesses to the area. People could do their grocery shopping in their own neighbourhood, and sit out front and have a bite while they're waiting for their laundry. The association could get government grants to hire and train young people to work in the co-op, because there are a lot of local unemployed youth who would like to learn skills. A co-op project like this would really help to sustain the community and make it thrive. I want people to walk down Gottingen and enjoy it, not drive down it on the way somewhere else.

$50,000 Expand my business
I'd use this money to expand the hostel into another Maritime city. When backpackers come to Canada a lot of them only go west, and I think that everyone who visits Canada needs to come east as well. I love meeting people who are traveling and helping them to make their experience really excellent. So with $50,000 I'd go to the bank with our business plan (we have one already) and use it to get the leverage to finance the whole thing at a reasonable interest rate. We'd need to buy a building, renovate it, and stock it with bunk beds, sheets, a washer and dryer, a kitchen and computers. This way is pretty different from the way we opened the first hostel: we got two $15,000 young entrepreneur loans, applied for a bunch of credit cards and did a lot of bar tending to pay for drywall! Now that I have a new baby, there is a lot more at stake than when I was 23 with no responsibilities.

$1,000 Some tunes for the car
I've only ever driven secondhand cars (right now it's a 1994 Honda Accord) and I have never had a working car stereo. I would love to go out and buy a really nice CD player with some good speakers. That would make me happy! I mainly drive to go camping in the summer and snowboarding in the winter, and you just want to listen to music on the way to those kinds of things.

The big payoff

I've never thought of myself as the kind of person who thought that a lack of money was a reason not to do something. But in thinking about this windfall, I realized that the money is what is holding me back from expanding my hostel and improving the neighbourhood. And really, $50,000 is a lot of money, but it's also not a lot of money, you know? I've been able to acquire more than that before. So I discovered that these ideas really could be possible, which is so exciting. I've even started to work on a business plan for the co-op, instead of just thinking about it, and I began bouncing ideas off everyone from my MLA to my staff to people at the hostel and cafe. People usually play devil's advocate, but when it's just dream money, they don't! It was phenomenal to talk about ideas without hearing from the naysayers.



The successful businesswoman
Karen Howe, 46
Toronto
"I have a well-paid, interesting career that I love, as a creative director and vice president at an advertising agency. I also own a local microbrewery. I can work 70 hour weeks sometimes, but spending time with my kids is what gets me racing home at night."

$100,000 Spend a year abroad
I thought about spending part of the money on cooking lessons in Paris--it's my favourite city in the whole world, and I love to cook. And of course I'd need a week at a health spa to knock off the pounds I picked up during the cooking lessons! But really, I would want the ultimate one-year trip for my family, and I would spend every cent making it the best travel experience it could be. My husband and I would both take a year's leave of absence from our jobs, and my kids, age 10 and 13, would leave school for a year. This trip would the best education they could ever get.

The only rule would be: no hotels. We would truly try to experience each country like a native, not a tourist. As North Americans, we live this kind of sanitized life; everywhere you go there's a Walmart and a Best Western. So we'd shop in local markets, cook for ourselves, rent a small house or apartment. You can be very insulated growing up in a city. My kids have this upper middle class life, and it's important for them to see how the rest of the world lives.

Where would we go? We'd rent a gite in Provence, make pasta in Italy and pick olives in Spain. We would ride camels through the Moroccan dessert. We would sail through the Greek Islands, stopping wherever we wanted. We'd dive off the coast of Australia, then hike in New Zealand. My daughter has shown a keen interest in India, and my kids love Indian food, so it's definitely a must. Tokyo seems to have an increasing influence on a lot of our cultural touchstones, like technology, so I think we should experience it firsthand.
And we'd go to Bolivia. I did an advertising campaign for Foster Parents Plan years ago, and the director felt strongly I should see firsthand what the organization does. She was right. They sent me to Bolivia for 11 days, and I fell in love with it. The people have nothing. They live like we did in the 1300s--no electricity, no running water, living off the land in a parched country--yet they are happy. My husband and I then decided to sponsor a foster child, a boy the same age as my son. For eleven years we've written letters and sent photos and drawings, and gifts like a soccer ball that can be shared with the other kids in the village. We'd like to meet him after all these years.

We'd fly home to Toronto via New York City. The pace and energy of that city is palpable. I think you have to feel the buzz firsthand to understand it. My kids experienced 9/11 on a TV screen, and I would like them to visit the site of the World Trade Centre to help them understand the magnitude of what happened.
And once home we would inflict our trip photographs on every living being with a 30-km radius!

The big payoff:
It was pretty cool thinking about this windfall. I talked about it with some colleagues at work, and it was interesting to see how people wanted different things. Acquiring stuff doesn't really interest me. I don't want a Jaguar or an enormous diamond ring, or stuff I have to dust! I do want to acquire experiences.
We're planning our next trip, likely to Ireland, and we'd like to do a house swap, to stick with the "no hotels" rule. It's the windfall dream played out on a smaller scale. Travel affects the way you think for the rest of your life, whether it's about art or politics or food. It's more than just experiencing different economic situations; it's truly seeing how others live, work and play. I want to give that to my kids.