I have chosen to respond to Option 2, and I am inviting 
I write this from the perspective of someone whose skills have the potential to earn me a million dollars over the next few decades – someone who just learned a few months ago that the last hurdle is really having access to proper advertising and marketing of good work already existing, in addition to the blessing of writing on Hive every day.
It took me until age 40 to know this, and I thank God because now I can say for certain that a million dollars would not change the minimalistic practices I have been subconsciously adopting.
I discovered in this year that I am a city-dwelling slow liver, thanks to
I also found out that I vibe with people who are guardians of Earth healing knowledge, thanks to
Covid-19 shut down a lot of activities in the world, and after 21 months, a lot of us have realized that a lot of what we were doing was not as important as we thought it was. To me, it has actually been a great relief.
This allowed me to section off life for the purpose of examination:
- The importance of daily expressing creativity: cost, $0
- The importance of nature and getting into it for inspiration: cost, $0
- The importance of reaching out and working on connections with people in real ways: cost, $0
- The importance of (re)discovering how to be with one's self and God, without fear: cost, $0
- Living expenses and ministry to others in the same situation in this capitalist society: cost, MUCH
- The importance of learning of new concepts and opportunities in the age of the internet: cost, MINIMAL
If I had a million dollars, it would go into sections 5 and 6 – but really, the mastery of sections 1-4 is generating the necessities of 5 and 6 NOW, and constraining the cost of section 5.
It also helps me that I come from people who acquired a lot of knowledge things … more books than any other material possessions because of their need to know about the world. That was fitting for the world before the internet, and to a point, still fitting. If I ever moved off grid, several good books would be needed in addition to the constant learning from the world around me still.
But, I am a city dweller, and this is where the Lord has me ministering right now. I have been able to put in two decades ministering to the people around me – the investment of TIME – because I need so little that costs for myself. I have my room, and once I let go of more of the books I have collected and clothes I am not keeping, I will have even more space in it. I am presently clearing out things other people think I should forever store for them … but, official filing spaces and recycling bins for abandoned files are real things.
Slowly, the practice of minimalism opens more space for me where I am – most recently, although I am not a Black Muslim, I have discovered that Elijah Muhammad was correct when he said that only one meal a day is necessary. I find that physical peace and strength is best achieved for me when I have one true meal in the middle of the day and end with tea or just water. I might have a piece of fruit in the morning, and, by default, getting enough nutrients in this way requires an emphasis on high-quality foods – plenty of leafy green vegetables, a solid amount of protein and carbs and fats to make up the other half. A vitamin supplement also helps me.
Yesterday's main attraction in the greens department, taken by the author
But, the payoff is time to digest and break down food, and time not spent thinking about the next meal – I take my time on my one meal and enjoy it, and then turn my attention to other matters. This practice opens space, morning and evening, for me to create and connect. It is not that I cannot eat another meal if my body really needs it. Not that I don't sometimes put milk in my tea or take my supplements with it, or, if I have exertion beyond my usual exercise, that I might not eat a snack anywhere that I need it.
But because I have been working my way up and around my hilly city regularly, and eating thermogenic foods for more than a year now, my metabolism has picked up so that I can make use of my food well.
Powdered greens from Vitauthority, with turmeric and grains of paradise along with 12 other greens, taken by the author
In this way, the body has rest from constantly laboring in digestion and can give energy for other things. Weight loss is slow because I have my father's body type: I convert fat to muscle shockingly well for a woman. But not overeating – which for me was the standard three meals and really, even a sizable two meals – and avoiding empty calories is doing the slow and steady trick.
Weight loss, is, in essence, a minimalist practice at its most personal: finding and releasing the habits that lead to unnecessary excesses of the body. A lot of those excesses have to do with responding to stress, with being in unhealthy relationships and situations, and in not thinking through what is really needed to live and live well. A million dollars, absent those realizations, would only tend to destroy one faster – but with those realizations and better practices around them, a million dollars does no harm and really can only do so much on impacting good decisions already made.
To have a million dollars, for me, right now, would simply remove money from being a major lifetime consideration – the expenses of sections 5 and 6 would be covered for quite some time, and I would take time to invest it so that they would remain covered. I would then devote myself as I am already devoting myself largely to sections 1 and 4, and out of those do the things that are needed from sections 5 and 6 – but since I am already doing what I intend to be doing, having a million dollars now would be convenient, but would not make much difference.