re: About to get somewhat large amount of money and would like advice my current plans for it

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I do have market exposure. I am 41 years old and between my wife and I as of today our current value of our IRA/401K’s is $580K

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Congratulations on being a millionaire.

You’re fairly young, so if this all went to “Super safe” investments, you’re going to be fairly heavy on them- assuming you have zero in bonds/cash/gold in the 401k, this would put you at 50/50 stocks/bonds. Even the most conservative recommendations say that your age in bonds is a good target (it’s a bit too conservative for me).

Assuming a fixed rate mortgage on your other property, i would drag it out another 27 years- your rate is less than the cost of inflation recently, and you won’t refinance into something like that again.


Kids? Plans to pay for school? Good way to get into 529s (I’m not sure about actual benefit here…you can take an income tax deduction for the money that goes in, don’t think there’s a way to do a 1031 into a 529, but be benefit would almost certainly be better to take on the income side anyway. You can also take an income deduction by paying tuition directly years from now if I’m not mistaken, so you get some free growth with some strings attached).

If I got an unexpected check like this, it would go to my taxable account. We have a few items on a list that we are going to work towards in the next few years (still have about $30K of med school loans 5 years out of training, new car for wife, outdoor kitchen, sealing the attic with foam and decking it so it becomes a more suitable place to store things). We may pick one or two of those items with an influx (rather than making extra payments or increasing the monthly amount, we both agree to just wait until we’ve saved about $30K extra and hit it at once - we have had a lot of curveballs the last few years and keep a bit larger emergency fund that we don’t like to touch) but our main goal is retirement/financial security. So most of this would go into a taxable account with our standard investments (60% SPY, 20% small cap, 20% total international).


Now, in 2020 I front loaded my SIMPLE IRA and watched the market plummet 3 days later. I would’ve been quite a bit better off by investing periodically (monthly) than throwing it in up front. So there’s a decent argument to put it in at regular intervals or dollar cost averaging over 6-24 months. But I would probably lump it in the day I got it except for the amount I set aside for “fun “ as above.