This weekâs rebroadcast from 2008 covers how characters talk about large sums of money, and making sure those conversations make sense.
John notes: A few points feel very 2008 in this post. Over the past 15 years, housing prices have risen so much that One Million Dollars doesnât feel extraordinary for a home in certain areas. Also, thereâs a growing awareness of households who are simultaneously rich and broke, earning huge incomes yet falling further behind.
Still, a million bucks is a lot of money.
Whatâs so special about one million dollars?
In movies, TV, and actual conversation itâs by far the most frequently quoted dollar figure to mean ârich,â despite inflation. The top-shelf reality competition shows (Survivor, The Amazing Race) use that as the prize figure. But itâs not just a lot of money. Itâs been mythologized as the transformative tipping point between the life we have and some mythological Good Life in which profound satisfaction is possible.
Consider this discussion from Office Space:
PETER
Our high school guidance counselor used to ask us what youâd do if you had a million dollars and you didnât have to work. And invariably what youâd say was supposed to be your career. So, if you wanted to fix old cars then youâre supposed to be an auto mechanic.
SAMIR
So what did you say?
PETER
I never had an answer. I guess thatâs why Iâm working at Initech.
MICHAEL
No, youâre working at Initech because that question is bullshit to begin with. If everyone listened to her, thereâd be no janitors, because no one would clean shit up if they had a million dollars.
SAMIR
You know what I would do if I had a million dollars? I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds and then take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in securities...
MICHAEL
Samir, youâre missing the point.
But heâs not. Samir has it right: the question of what youâd do if you had a million dollars is essentially the same as what youâd do with a million dollars. Sure, you could answer, âIf I had a million dollars, Iâd light myself on fire and jump out of a tree.â But the question strongly implies âWhat would you do that you couldnât do right now if you had a million dollars.â And while rich people often do stupid things, stupidity itself is free.
And Michael is right, too. The question is sort of bullshit. Iâd argue that the phrase âand you didnât have to workâ is easy to challenge. Could you really retire on a one-time windfall of a million dollars? Even before taxes and inflation, itâs less than you think:
If you drew down 4 percent of your $1 million nest egg every year, a share many financial advisers recommend as prudent, you would receive about $40,000 annually, before adjusting for inflation â a pretty comfortable salary outside major metropolitan areas, especially if your house is paid off. Of course, how far that $3,333 a month goes depends on your lifestyle, health, and inflation.
Forty thousand dollars is not what most Americans would consider rich. Itâs not first-class to Paris.
Of course, this is logic talking. And our mythologizing of one million dollars is more emotional than rational. I have a few working hunches why a million dollars seems so special.
We have no personal frame of reference for âmillion.â Most Americans earn five figures ($10,000 to $99,999). If we buy a house, weâre likely dealing with six figures ($100,000 to $999,999). But few Americans will ever encounter seven figures in relation to their own finances. So it seems like a magical and unobtainable sum.
All rich people are millionaires, so all millionaires must be rich. This failure of the symmetric property has been pointed out in books like The Millionaire Next Door, which shows that cost-containment and steady investment is a more realistic lifestyle for the average millionaire. Along the same lines, having a million dollars isnât the same as making a million dollars. Itâs easy to confuse assets with income. When stocks and home prices were rising, an increasing number of Americans became millionaires on paper.1 But since thatâs not spendable cash, itâs not what most people mean by millionaire.
What matters is the million, not the actual value. Americans would rather have the million dollars than 750,000 euros. And two million dollars doesnât feel twice as good as one million.
When a million is meaningless
Despite these defenses, I think the million dollarsâ cinematic days on top are numbered, and screenwriters would be wise to avoid the figure in scripts. Itâs simply not enough money to have a clear meaning. Consider:
EVELYN
Have you met Tom, her fiancé? His apartment in New York cost almost a million dollars!
Is the proper responseâŠ
TAMI
I always knew sheâd marry money.
orâŠ
TAMI
What is that, a one-bedroom?
(In fact, a million could be as little as a loft.)
If you need to have characters talk about money, youâre much better off referring an object (or service) than its price.
EVELYN
Her ring cost more than my car.
TAMI
She gets her hair done by this woman who flies in from Paris. Can you imagine?
EVELYN
She ripped out the limestone in the bathroom because it wasnât organic. Turns out they donât make organic limestone. So she got this stone from Italy. Used to be a church.
Billion is the new million. Sort of.
For now, I think you can safely get away with calling a billionaire rich.2 Keep in mind, itâs a staggering amount of money, so any character thusly defined would have to have a plausible explanation. For example, rich as he is, Will Smith is likely not a billionaire. With rare exception, you become a billionaire though canny investments or lucky inheritance.
Do millionaires dream of being billionaires? I donât golf, so I havenât heard this topic come up in conversation. But my experience of earning money in Hollywood has been that oneâs financial ambition caps out at a certain point. The dream of a million dollars is a life free from financial worry: paying for the mortgage, college, and retirement. Once those fears are addressed â at a figure likely significantly higher than one million dollars â there is less to reach for financially.
So while I donât advocate using the million dollar figure in scripts, I think it still has some real-world years ahead of it as a psychological milestone. Wealth isnât simply what you can buy; itâs how much protection you have from poverty. A million dollars may not be ârich,â but itâs a comforting distance from poor.
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âOn paperâ is really a terrible term, because I donât know any millionaires who keep a million in gold laying around.
Iâm speaking of the U.S. definition of billion, which is a thousand million.