Brewster’s Billion – 12 Mind-blowingly Creative Ways to Blow a £1Billion

1. Brewster’s Billion – 12 Mind-blowingly Creative Ways to Blow a £1Billion (Infographic) Depending on your age, you may have seen the 80’s film Brewster’s Millions in which Richard Prior is issued the challenge of spending $30 million in 30 days… so he can inherit $300 million. That doesn’t sound like too much of a challenge nowadays. And so, for a bit of fun in these hard times, the Loanable team have updated the model and taken a look at 12 ways to outlandishly burn through a billion pounds. And we’ve made it into a fun infographic for your enjoyment too. 1) Create Your Own Country We realised we’d also need to decide what type of regime we’d want to create. A military dictatorship or a parliamentary democracy? (The latter, probably. At least at first) We’d also need to build government buildings – and possibly a personal palace

2. for sheer indulgence. An island ought to probably have a naval fleet to protect its sovereignty, too – but we threw caution to the wind and just went with an army. We would also, of course, need our own currency. Ours would be called: “The Colin” Spending We based our spending on a 3 year plan Cost of army is based on a 1000 man standing army. This is estimated to cost around £45 million for the first year, £30m for the year after, and £30m the year after that (£105m) Costs of roads and infrastructure to create a mini town in our country is around £90m. Total cost rounded up to £200m. 2) Offer Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin £50m each to Wrestle The two men recently moved closer to becoming if not allies then at least not sworn enemies. But maybe they can step on to the mat in the name of charity. There’s nothing in our rules that says people can’t give away the money that we pay to them. However, the odds may be stacked in the President of Russia’s favour since as well as being an accomplished ice hockey player (and of course bare-chested horse rider) Putin apparently has Judo prowess, too. But as with Trump’s skills on the golf course and North Korea’s claims that Kim Jong-Il Invented The Hamburger, this may just be propaganda. Spending £100m cost is at our discretion. There’s no market rate for Heads of State grappling!

3. 3) Pay Morgan Freeman to appear in a Biopic of your Life to be Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino We’re excited by the idea of how Tarantino would play out the rest of our natural life. And since Freeman’s being us, it means we would insist on being cast as a side kick… of our self. Tarantino is partial to having his actors perform their own extremely dangerous stunts which almost led to Uma Thurman dying in a car crash during the making of Kill Bill. So we might meet our end in real life before we get killed off in the screenplay. Spending We estimate that Tarantino would usually receive around £15m to write and direct. But we figure he’ll need a sweetener to get him to make a film about us / Colin, so we’re adding £10m. Morgan Freeman earned around £23m in 2013. We estimate taking up 10 weeks of his time. So pro rata, that’s about £5m. We’re also giving him a £10m sweetener. We estimate a production budget of around £40m, having looked at films in a comparable bracket Total cost £80m 4) Commission a Life-Sized Remote Controlled T-Rex. This would be the closest anyone could get to a real life version of Jurassic Park. It’s estimated that T-Rex’s could run at almost 30km/h which would be pretty awesome to emulate in our toy. Ideally, we’d then find someone else who could compete with our spending and commission their own T-Rex so we could have epic, remote- controlled dinosaur fights. Spending

4. This is fairly subjective, depending on the spec. of the dinosaur design. Our £10m cost is based on conversations with those in the robot and toy fields. 5) Pay the Rolling Stones to play for You and You alone This would be a chance to one-up oligarchs and the mega-rich who pay A-List acts to play for hundreds of people. But, as far as know, never for just one. If you’re thinking about blowing part of your billion on a band, may be more inclined to hire Rhianna for a cool £6 mil. Or if you’re looking to save a few quid, you could always plug for Noughties throwback, Nickelback. Yours for around £500k. But in all honesty, that’s not how billionaires should roll. Spending £6m is based on the actual, approximate cost of hiring the band – as cited in online articles 6) Burn It The KLF apparently effectively bankrupted themselves by doing this. One of its 2 members, Bill Drummond, has also said his children found it somewhat hard to comprehend that their inheritance literally went up in flames. We’ll definitely score our competition entrants highly for coming up with elaborate, outlandish and expensive pranks and publicity stunts! Spending £1m is the actual cost of the pecuniary pyromania

5. 7) Buying a Florida Lakeside Home and Filling the Lake with Viagra Would this make fish horny, as well? We don’t really want to find out the answer, since we do not advocate the actual polluting of lakes. This is a flight of fictional fancy! We were, however, interested to learn that an estimated 4.3 million men in the UK suffer from some form of erectile dysfunction. And it was somewhat surprising to discover that since 2011, the US military has spent $295 million on viagra as part of healthcare for current and former troops. No wonder it has one of the biggest defence budgets on the planet. Spending We estimate buying a lakeside house for £800,00. The viagra to pollute the lake is estimated to cost around £400,000 Total £1.2m 8) Visit the Islands of Swimming Pigs with a group of 30 Family and Friends One of the unsubstantiated rumours behind the presence of the pigs is that a conspiracy theorist introduced them (and himself) to the island, fearing a computer crash armageddon on 1st January 2000. The pig hoarder’s plan, so the story goes, was to live a subsistence live on the land as the rest of the world was destroyed by technology and the illuminati (Maybe it will still happen one day) Spending A (pretty damn cool) private jet: London to Miami (return) would cost around £300,000 Private Jet hire for Miami to Nassau (return) plus boat hire from Nassau to Pig Island (return) would cost around £250,000

6. Mansion rental in Miami for a week would cost £100,000 (for the one we want to stay in anyway) You’ve got to let your 30 guests live large so let’s say they each get £4k spends per day for 7 nights which comes to £840k Total £1.5m approx 9) Pay for Re-Forestation in Indonesia to help Save the Tiger and create a Tourist Safari Site The total number of tigers has dropped by 95% since the start of the 20th century. This is predominantly down to poaching so that their skin can be used for garments and their body parts can be used in expensive, unproven medicines. There are, in fact, now more tigers living as (often illegal) pets than there are in the wild. Hopefully, the World Wildlife Federation can succeed in its plan which was set out at The Summit of the Tiger (cool name) to double their numbers by 2022. Payment We’re plugging for £300 million, but the sky’s the limit. Billions could be spent on saving the tiger. 10) Start a Luxury Resort for Single Over 65’s “Help the aged” as Jarvis Cocker from Pulp once sang. And while there are plenty of old people who would tell you to sod off and mind your own business, there are lots who would welcome the chance to meet new people. As it stands, there are lots of “retirement communities” where the highlights are a cafeteria and a weekly game of bingo. Not that there’s anything wrong with bingo, but we reckon our heavily- subsidised haven represents a serious upgrade. Payment

7. We envisage a pimp resort being built in the Caribbean. Comparable projects cost a similar amount to our projection. Total £200m 11) Pay Ted Danson to Spend the Rest of his Natural Life with you We recently discovered that the beer Danson and his cohorts swirled on during Cheers episodes wasn’t a complete fake but contained between 3-4% alcohol – which is about the same as a Bud Light. This means that while the cast weren’t necessarily sozzled, the endless takes in which they sipped beer may well have kept them merry. From Cheers and his other outings, Ted Danson managed to accumulate an estimated £47million, so we’re proposing to more than double his net worth. Spending Hard to quantify what price Ted Danson places on his freedom, so we grant that the figure is somewhat subjective! Total £100.3m 12) Re-Build your Local Pub on the Moon If the hotel development that is planned for the moon happens, it’ll apparently cost $60million per person per month – which is the minimum stay. Its guests would be our pubs only punters and it’s a good job they have deep pockets as transportation costs mean a pint of beer would initially cost about £1.75 million pounds. We would propose a special lunchtime offer of soup, sandwich and a beer for £2.5 million or you could graze on a bag of peanuts for £1.35 million.

8. Spending Like we say, there might not be enough dough to fund the trip back from the moon. NASA’s estimate for a “cheap” Moon Hub is £4.65billion Total £1bn You can see the infographic yourself here