How much money do ya need for pete's sake?

How much do you need to be happy?
The question pops up from time to time in our house when redundancy or unemployment beckon. (Which they do roughly twice a year - hey, it keeps us on our toes) Now I know that if we couldn't make the mortgage payments and lost our house I'd be pretty miserable. And I know that if I had to feed the kids on economy white bread and ham made out of kangaroo entrails, that would make me exceedingly depressed. But beyond a secure place to live (and by that I mean when you open the front door you don't have to step around the syringes and pools of blood) and nice things to eat, how much do we actually need?
No-one needs two cars per family, and no-one needs a spare bedroom, nice as these things may be.
Holidays abroad can be just as shit as camping in the UK - in fact in my experience much shitter.
If no-one had a haircut or a new pair of shoes, these things would cease to matter.
And of course if you have two toilets, you have to clean two toilets.
Who in their right mind wants to clean two toilets?

Now sometimes I go all materialistic and I want nice bath products and nice clothes and posh wheat beer and stuff. I'm not like Ghandi or anything. But it is a really nice feeling to know that if anyone broke into your house, they would take one look and decide not to bother. And if there were a fire, the only things I'd bother to save would be Pooky and Puggle. (I can't lift my Beloved - he weighs 11 stone or something, but I'm sure he'd get out)

The more you have, the more you worry; the more you're tied down to the earth.

But.........
It'd be nice, when the council threatens to shut down a project to increase literacy in children in care for the sake of £5K, to throw the £5K at them and say "Here, you mean fuckers, take the pissing money and shut up".
It'd be nice to take out a hit on George W. Bush.
I would really really like to build an arts centre and give all my friends a job.

I reckon about £15000000 would do.