I couldn't believe I had forgotten about my dad's high school graduation present. He had told me not to touch it for ten years, and it had just slipped my mind. It just wasn't as valuable back then.

It was a 20 lb case of rare earth metals. He had acquired it on one of his many business trips to China many years before. Now that these metals, which were essential to the manufacture of technology, had been completely mined out of all known deposits, it was easy to find a buyer.

I just picked up the phone and dialed the main number for Apple. Within 10 minutes I was negotiating price. In two days, I was almost a million dollars richer.

I was rich. Almost a million dollars. I checked my bank account on my phone again. It was still almost a million dollars. In my city, you can buy a small farm close enough in to get delivery pizza for $100k. That was as high as I had ever aspired.

Then I made an appointment with a financial advisor in the capital city an hour and a half away. They were busy for the next two weeks until I told them how much money I had just come upon. I saw an adviser that afternoon.

In a nutshell, I got my money to work for me.

I did spend some of it right away. I bought a small relatively new modular house on five acres with a small barn about twenty minutes from our small town for $85,000. $15,000 bought me a stock pond and filled it with catfish, bluegill, and bass. The well was $5000. $3000 bought my wife the wood burning stove she's always wanted, and it turns out the cat never knew he always wanted.

We gardened. We tended goats, and milked them. We kept a hen house. We never once used the central heat and air. We became creatures of the seasons. 5 years later, we mastered the final skill that had been eluding us on our journey to become self sufficient for food - the creation of cooking oil. My wife successfully made enough for several fish fries from sunflower seeds.

When the sun burped in 2027, ruining every electronic device beyond repair worldwide, we did fine. My parents and my wife's sister made it to us before the roads became dangerous. We just planted extra crops, lived in daylight hours, and sat on our cash until new technology slowly trickled into being and the economy recovered ten years later.