361–370 of 531 posts
Put it all in VTSAX. Sell 4% or less per year. Enjoy a six-figure income for the rest of your life. If anyone ever asks you to do something you don't want to, tell them "fuck you".
From 2m in the account: high quality $1m home or condo, a nice car, call myself retired and build passion project websites until I die.
I've already accomplished this in my mind, hence my username.
This is a great thread. Throwaway also. Gonna write some stream-of-consciousness here, because I have to start my work day, but I personally made approx. this amount from an exit, and it has gone very well for me and my family (wife + 3 kids). Some additional fine-tuned advice of what worked for me: (1) don't be afraid to spend money - high hourly rates - for a good accountant and good tax attorney. (2) if I were you…
Hi, Some tips from me: - Take a nice holiday - Don't rush into investing. Take some time to think about what you want to do. - If you invest in stocks, do it in a staged plan. Resist the urge to sell when it's going down, and the urge to buy when it's going up. (I could not resist buying when it went up beginning January this year). Start with small amounts first. Be there for the long run (don't sell/buy all the tim…
When you have a large amount of money the most important thing is not to make any huge mistakes. The best way not to make a huge mistake is to just sit on your hands and do nothing. This is advice that anybody can follow, as opposed to your advice which is vague and absolutely not without risk (there is nothing conservative about buying index funds 10 years into a bull market).
As one of the "wealth managers" who you apparently should avoid like the plague, I'll just put my $.02 here for what it's worth. There is undeniably a lot of crap in the financial services space. I live in it and I could not agree more. I have to face this down every time someone asks what I do for a living. But this isn't really relevant to whether or not OP should hire an advisor. It just makes the job of finding a…
I do think the advice to "do nothing for a while" is the best advice though. Give it a few months, anyway. If and when you DO want to consider a wealth manager guy, find a guy who doesn't take a percentage and works for a flat fee. Still, they might get kickbacks from certain investments so don't just jump into anything if it doesn't make clear sense to you (being skeptical is free, being closed off can cost you). I know a few high-up investment banker types and the interesting thing is most people with wealth aren't trying to find the next Apple stock but simply want to not lose their money. Most people with a lot of money invest with this mindset, so your feelings are pretty normal.
At a certain amount of money you start to realize there's no such thing as a safe place to stash it all. Keeping it in cash has risks (inflation!), FDIC only insures to a small amount and the stock market tends to move all at once because everything is tied together. So don't stress yourself out too much about it and don't try to get too cute because "you have a feeling the market is gonna..."
Change your life as little as possible is probably the best advice for not spending too much too fast with the risk of forming lifestyle changes that grows out of control over 10+ years. But I DO recommend spending money on things that make your day-to-day life easier or happier. That could be anything from buying 30 pairs of the same socks and throwing away your old ones so you don't have to find matching socks all the time to moving closer to work (if you still work) so you have less of a commute, or anything in between. I found it really helpful for a while to ask myself "is this something I wouldn't previously buy but it will improve my happiness every day?" If the answer was yes, I mostly made that change and it helped me continue to apply money to things of value without hamstringing myself needlessly.
As one of the "wealth managers" who you apparently should avoid like the plague, I'll just put my $.02 here for what it's worth. There is undeniably a lot of crap in the financial services space. I live in it and I could not agree more. I have to face this down every time someone asks what I do for a living. But this isn't really relevant to whether or not OP should hire an advisor. It just makes the job of finding a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, try to ignore the fact that it's money; imagine it's some other asset the person wants to keep, like 100 ponies. You would definitely suggest reading up on how to successfully keep ponies, right?
They are not closely similar. Ponies will die if you dont know how to handle them, money while being gobbled away by inflation will more or less hold its value. It's a smart thing to do learn money-management at any point of your life, even more with a sudden windfall like this. The OP seems like a straightforward guy who isnt really interested in money hence this post. So it's up to him what kind of impact he'd like…
This is a great thread. Throwaway also. Gonna write some stream-of-consciousness here, because I have to start my work day, but I personally made approx. this amount from an exit, and it has gone very well for me and my family (wife + 3 kids). Some additional fine-tuned advice of what worked for me: (1) don't be afraid to spend money - high hourly rates - for a good accountant and good tax attorney. (2) if I were you…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is nuts. They should just take time to pursue things that actually interest them and continue living as they were. The only way you'd spend all this money is if you started doing crazy things like buying speed boats and other such nonsense.
A fool and his money are soon parted, and whilst OP does not sound like a fool, he came to this forum for help so he would not act foolish. To wit, this is probably the wrong forum if people are going to respond as you did, Sir, so he is probably better off over on Bogleheads.
Though my personal game plan was take one of they founders of nominet worth well over 100m at one point) out for lunch in the best restaurant in Brighton and ask hime what he would have done differently :-)
Or do a cheeky letter to one of the Rosthchild's I met at fast Tuesday years ago