The Most Boring Way to Spend a Million

Rock artists The Barenaked Ladies had a hit with "If I Had a Million Dollars."

Have you ever, really, thought about what you'd do?

Unlike the Ladies, we wouldn't be buying a monkey, that's for sure.

I've tried the exercise before and it always works out the same. To paraphrase a stolen line from the great movie Office Space, "If I had a million dollars, I'd do nothing." Well, that's close, anyway.

The belief here is that I could put $1 million to work in the most boring of ways:

1) I'd remove all the debt from my life: credit cards, home and auto loans, the money we're still paying the private school from two years ago. That would leave approximately $850,000.

2) I'd slip $500,000 into an income-producing fund. A 12-percent return nets us in the neighborhood of a $60,000 income. And, with no debt, that's plenty to live a happy life on. And, we're left with $350,000.

3) I'd put $100,000 of it into a trust fund for my daughters. No more worrying about college tuitions and having to repeat the word, "SCHO-LAR-SHIP" each day to both of them. That leaves us with a paltry quarter-million.

4) My wife once spent a few months in Italy. I think Italy sucks. OK, I've never been there. She really, really wants to go back, though, so let's fork over $10,000 and do it up nice. I'm not staying into baseball season, though. Now, we have $240,000.

5) A good portion of the remaining money, let's say $100,000 needs to go to charity. Half the amount goes to organized charities - approved by me, of course - and the other half will be given to those in need - again, as determined by me. We're left with $140,000.

6) Let's put $100,000 into retirement funds. I told you this was going to be boring. Now, we're left with $40,000.

7) My wife has had her eye on those new Volkswagen bugs for a while. We'll find a deal on something that isn't sitting on a new car lot - pet peeve - and drop $20,000 on it. Now, we're left at $20,000.

8) I'm taking $15,000 and flying some friends and myself to a nice golf resort. We're going to play at least 36 holes a day (probably 54), play cards most of the night, enjoy good food and they're going to think I'm really cool. That leaves $5,000.

9) Excuse me, sir. How much for the monkey?