#once the overall fund exceeded 50 million dollars I'd buy a square mile of land next to an Amtrak line and build the core of a carfree town

[corollarytower]

I see a line of thinking for each of these.

The first argument is one that focuses on overall value. $1,000 per day is about equivalent to $365,000 per year. You might think that if you have another 30 years in you that this would eventually add up to more money, but not necessarily! You have to consider the Time Value of Money (TVM). An investment of $P yields an annual return of i*P=X, where i is the annual interest. typical APR ranges from a few percent to 10 percent after tax, so lets assume you pick a low fee mutual fund and get 8% consistently. that means you can calculate the value of $365,000/year as P=X/i=$365000/.08=$4,562,500. The value of the payments till the end of time is equal to about 4.5 million dollars today. This ignores the risk of your eventual death. By this line of reasoning, get the cash today.

The other line of argument is one of certainty. Do you feel confident that someone won't talk you into putting a million dollars into the equivalent of crypto twenty years from now? What about your own risk of buying a liiiiittle too much year after year and eventually running out? You could hire someone to manage it for you, but that turns into a question of how much you trust your financial advisor, who (in the US) is often not required to keep your best interest in mind when managing your investments. A thousand dollar daily annuity, assuming that it is something you can reliably count on forever, would be able to put those fears to bed.

Financial stuff involves judgement calls like this all the time. What's your tolerance for risk? Your capacity for self control? Would giving a portion of the lump sum to friends and family strengthen or strain your support network? In a world where right wingers are constantly trying to tear down the social safety net, it's valuable to plan for your own financial self-sufficiency, whether that's for an individual or a community.

Explain your reasoning plzzz