Hello, my mother, sister, and I (son) are looking for some advice on what to do with a windfall of $400,000 from the passing of my father on December 31, 2021. The money is not taxed.
We were left with a $290,000 mortgage on our home which is valued at around $600,000.
My father did not have any savings and did have debt which we have not paid at all since it was all in his name. My mother has about $4,000 of debt which we do plan on paying off. I have about $20,000 in student loan debt and my sister has about $20,000 in student loan debt that we do not plan on paying off for quite a while as due to COVID, there are delays in place and the interest rate is not high.
Our current income:
Myself: $40,000 / year job (First job ever, expecting a $5,000 / year raise in 2 months and the average salary for my role is $70,000 in the US which should come to fruition 6 months - 1 year from now. Job security is very comfortable, family friend is employer.)
Sister: $200 / week (Still in college for another year. Had a job that laid her off when COVID started. On unemployment now.)
Rent: $1650 / month (2 family home, we rent the upstairs.)
Expenses:
Our expenses used to be about $5,500 / month when my father was here. We have significantly reduced our monthly expenses to about $4,000 / month and are still actively reducing where we can. Property taxes are a significant portion ($1,200 / month) from where we live.
Goal:
Our current goal or plan is to use the windfall to generate income or growth for the future (10+ years from now).
An idea that we have is:
$60,000 Emergency Fund Savings Account
$340,000 Bond/Stock/Mutual Fund Portfolio (not sure what would be best for us here, we do not expect to need the money for at minimum 5 years. We wish to put it somewhere and forget about it for a long time while in the future also adding to it when we earn more income.)
All of my job's income + my sister's unemployment (and future job) to pay the monthly expenses such as groceries, mortgage, utilities, etc. I already have $25,000 in my checking account which I got from selling items online in video games I saved from over the years.
This really hit us by surprise as my father was a really great guy who was not sick/in bad health at all and was always enthusiastic and cheerful to everyone, even strangers. We miss him very much. Even in his death he took care of us to make sure we were going to be okay by having life insurance. We do not want to squander all he did for us and waste the money. We want to make sure we do it right and use this money as a great head start in life, even if it has to be without him.
Any advice is greatly appreciated, we were never rich financially, but my father made us feel rich with his upbeat personality. We are just kind of lost on how to make sure we don't squander this.
Submitted March 07, 2021 at 03:58PM by throwawayhelpjl https://ift.tt/3eiNhXa
