All,
I think many are forgetting exponential growth tracks and leveraging your investments.
$1 Put it in a bank in Switzerland
$10 Put it in a bank in Japan
$1 Hundred Put it in a bank in the U.S.
$1 Thousand Buy all the nanotech books & put them in
libraries in Russia
$1 Million Give the money to Zyvex.
$1 Billion Start a company for nanoassembler research.
$1 Trillion Start a company for nanoassembler research.
$1 Quadrillion Start a company for nanoassembler research.
$1 Pentillion Start a company for nanoassembler research.
$1 Sextillion Start a company for nanoassembler research.
$1 Septillion Start a company for nanoassembler research.
$1 Octillion Start a company for nanoassembler research.
$1 Nonillion Start a company for nanoassembler research.
$1 Decillion Start a company for nanoassembler research.
The first amounts aren't big enough to do much with so you should balance the safety of the funds with growing it into something more robust. The library play leverages the skills of people who don't have access to the information that we do. The Zyvex play leverages a company already on the track (since there isn't enough to leverage it yourself). At the point you can really do something ($10 million+), then you should focus entirely on getting a nanoassembler. Greater amounts allows you to spread a wider net and get there sooner.
Spending the funds on *anything* else is a complete waste of time because your are simply burning it if you do anything that is based on non-nanoscale technologies. After the assembler/singularity everything gets so compressed the costs drop by 2-3 orders of magnitude (at least), so you can't easily judge how to spend "current" dollars.
Robert