I have never been out of the U.S., tng. In fact, I have never been further West than somewhere in PA. I would seriously consider New Zealand (it's where Lotr was filmed!!) or Ireland. Maybe Australia, but they have a lot of crazy snakes and other animals there. As for the 10k, I would spend some of it on my vacation, but put most of it in savings (let's say $7k) as I need an emergency fund. (Is that boring of me?) I would also buy a sweet-ass record player, since mine is cheap and broken, and maybe get another tattoo. $2k on the trip, $1k (grossly overestimating) on the record player and tattoo (in reality would probably be like $7500). Then back to normal life. Now if you offer me $50k, that's enough that I could have some serious play-around money and/or time. That's more in the realm of "So, I could quit my job right now..." - but - would I? Probably not, I like security.