What would it take?

I was just reading an old DaveNet post Dave Winer shared on Twitter, and it got me thinking. How much money would it take for me to feel comfortable for the rest of my life? I think that number, even living in California, would fall at about two million dollars.

What would I do?

I wouldn’t sit around, that’s for sure! I’d give myself one year to make my dream of running Apple Core Labs full time come true. I’ve been working on a new Mac application and it’s very slow going, I have no idea how long it’s going to take me to finish because I do it two and three hours at a time. I’d probably go out and buy a really nice dev setup, a fully loaded 15-in Macbook Pro, with a nice large Cinema Display. That’s a pretty extravagant setup. I typically wouldn’t spend that much cash on something, so that would be my splurge. From that point on it would be about delivering my new Mac application and making it work. After a year, if it wasn’t in the store, I’d hang the dream up and go back to work for someone else, even with a bunch of cash in the bank.

That’s what I’d do. What would you do?

UPDATE [4:30PM]: I’d actually make a run at creating a product if I could replace my salary and health care costs for a year, year and a half. Should be plenty of time to see if I could make it work.