Anonymous wrote:A 10k/year vacation fund to last the next 10 years.
Anonymous wrote:I'd split it up.
Pay off car.
$10k extra in each 529.
$5k home renovation project.
Balance straight into the stock market.
If too risky to dump it all in stocks, I'd rather pay mortgage early than dive into bonds. (Bonds are low yielding but can still decline. Paying off debt is truly a guaranteed return.) So if you decide you want to do 70/30 stock/bond, personally I'd take that $30k and toss it into the mortgage.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I recently inherited $100k in cash from the sale of a family property. DH and I both work HHI approx $200k. We don’t have any debt outside of a monthly car payment which is no interest and our mortgage (school loans, cc all paid off). We contribute the max to 401k and contribute $8k per year to our DS 529. We are not super wealthy but feel like we can afford what we need / want within reason. We have some additional investments besides retirement and enough $ in an emergency fund. So...the question is what would you do with extra money? Invest? Pay off car? Pay down mortgage?
We just inherited 120k. Similar situation. Mortgage is our only debt. We bought a hot tub for 10k and dumped the rest of it into our kids 529. That eliminated the 1k/mo we were putting into 529. Our kids now have VA prepaid done and 200k to split in the invest. Hopefully that will grow some.
Anonymous wrote:10k to charity;
25k home stuff (ranging from furniture to flooring to window treatments)
10k landscaping
10k vacation
45k park in a fund for kids for future (could be grad school help as undergrad is already funded, could be weddings, could be future down payment on a home)
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Regarding your kids college savings. Don't dump $40K or some big amount into the 529. Your state tax benefit from 529 investments has a cap/carryover restrictions. So once you've put enough in to max out the state tax benefit (which it sounds like you are already doing even without this $) there is no reason to put more into that investment vehicle. Plus you can't pull the $ out without penalty should you decide you need it for some unplanned or large unforeseen expense - or your child gets a college scholarship etc. You want to maximize your tax benefit, but keep some flexibility with how the fund could be accessed if need be. What our advisor told us is to open VA 529 accounts for your kids and max out the tax benefit, but then set up separate mutual fund account(s) for additional college savings. You can probably get better returns on the $ in mutual funds (given the higher number of brokerages/funds to choose from) than the 529 offers anyway. So yeah, get the state tax credit, but everything over the top goes into mutual funds.
Yea, but the 529 invest grows tax free. I got 22% returns off mine in 2017.