I don’t know if this is what some people would call life changing money.
safe bet: long term investment for retirement or to buy a house.
dreamer me: study the piano bachelor you always said you wanted to do, even if it’s just the bachelor, and not a master, even if you’re doing it not for the money or fame, but just because you want to play and maybe teach part time, but mostly because is something I enjoy doing, even if teaching the piano is mostly a side job to my main job.
I don’t know what to do. Feel free to read my previous post, because it’s related to this one.
a 150k present is going to have big taxes in the us unless the giver also payed it.
S&P500 indexed Mutual Fund. You can do this for free from the right reputable online brokerage. Then forget about it for a few decades if you can.
Always remind yourself that simply getting money doesnt make one good with money. Live your life as if you never got it. Hopefully it’ll be very useful when you’re older.
Buy a reaaallyy good pair of rollerskates.
Wheely good?
Maybe two pairs
I read your other post and thought I’d give you some insight about why you shouldn’t pursue another degree, especially in music. I did multiple degrees in music and I have never worked professionally in music. In fact, by the time I completed the program I hated playing my instrument and didn’t play for almost a decade.
The only reason to attend a university for music is if you need/want the credential or the ensemble experience. One uncomfortable truth is that most freshman piano students have over a decade of training before they start college. If you aren’t ready for the entrance audition now, then music school isn’t the way to go.
You can take private lessons (often from the same professors you’d have in school) for instrument technique, theory, repertoire, and ear training. You don’t need the university for that.
One thing people don’t like to talk about when it comes to music programs is that they are lifestyle degrees as much as they are intellectual degrees. There’s the classist element, the physical element (as a pianist or guitarist you can’t use your hands for any physical labor), and the financial element (instrument maintenance, performance quality instruments, travel, etc.).
Take the investment advice from others in this thread to set yourself up and then find some private teachers. You don’t need a degree to study music.
Edit: DM me if you want to talk about this more.
Wife asked if I ever thought of being a video game test. Shook my head no real quick. I like playing games.
Invest it index funds. If you must, set aside like 10 to 20% for something now. Vacation. Lessons. Whatever. Now ain’t the time to be whimsical with money.
You can afford 64GB of DDR5.
wise investment 💎🚀🚀🚀🌕
🙌💎🙌💎
I think the key pieces of information we’re missing here is how old are you and how life changing is this money for you.
If you’re young and poor, sock away about 2/3 of it in an index fund and 1/3 in a high interest savings. Take out loans and go chase that dream bro. Use the 1/3 in savings to cover your life expenses.
If you’re mid life and poor, use it to bolster your retirement. Defer the dream but chase it once you’re comfortable.
If you’re late life and poor, take lessons from a good tutor, don’t go for the Bach. Use it to subsidize Social security. Consider moving to a cheap country where that kind of money will support you for many years.
If you’re old and well off enough - go self actualize. Time truly is the scarcest resource.
~45k doesn’t get you that far these days depending on where you live. That’s $3750 a month for a year.
If you’re in the US, GTFO. Maybe you’d be better off financially by staying put but this country is so emotionally draining.
My partner and I had something similar happen and we used about 40K to pay off our house and fix/update some house stuff. Invest the remainder in the S&P 500 Index fund. Then let it sit for 10 years.
If invested in a diversified portfolio, you could safely withdraw 4% ($6000) every year for the rest of your life and still have $150k.
While this is probably true, 4% rule will leave you with money left 95% of the time over 30 years, not for your lifetime. So if you’re going to withdraw money from this for longer than 30 years you should probably adjust your withdrawal percentage to less than 4%.
You can withdraw/shift allocation to more stable assets during bullruns and live off these stable assets until the rest of your more volatile assets have made gains again.
I know this is cherry picked days, but it’s happened many times over the last hundred years. From 2000-2013 the market was essentially flat due to crashes in 2000 and 2008. Are you going to have enough stable assets for the market being flat for 13 years? no. Plus you’re talking about timing the market and knowing when these bull runs will start and for how long, which is just guessing. Not the best idea with your life’s savings.
That just means no extra money during these times.
You don’t need to try timing the market.
You operate with thresholds instead: the $150k have become $150k + x -> move x to stable assets and wait until the next time there’s x extra.
What’s not working is trying to have a reliable, stable source of extra incoming.
Skimming gains is possible though.
I am not a financial advisor, seek a professional.
My opinion: if you’re young, invest…now…and change nothing else about your life due to that money. Keep reinvesting the return. At some point, you’ll see you have over a million dollars and you’ll keep the snowball going – and you’ll find you can retire 10-20 years earlier than everyone else. If you’re older, still invest, but you may want to see what the best options will be for yielding good returns toward retirement.
Learn piano online. You don’t need a bachelor. As a musician, no one cares is you’ve got a piece of paper, they just wasn’t to know if you’ve got the skills. Check out ‘pianoforall’ on udamy. Its $50. And is all you need.
Invest in s&p500 index. See bogelheads.org for the investment playbook.
Invest in s&p500 index. See bogelheads.org for the investment playbook.
This. If OP got this $150k on Jan 1 of this year and put it in a boring old index fund tracking the S&P 500 OP would now have $168,810. That’s right, $18,810 in growth just from Jan 1 2026.
But bare in mind the economy is all kinds of messed up right now. That being said its the lowest risk way for your money to make money.
But bare in mind the economy is all kinds of messed up right now.
I’ll be the first to say that investing in the stock market is no sure thing. I’ll also say that past performance does not predict future results. I’ll also post this chart which shows the annual returns of the S&P 500 over the last 8 years. Even during the disruption of the global pandemic the returns were substantial.
With the exception of 2022, its been absolutely crazy crazy good! Even if someone invested at the worst time in 2022 absorbing the all of the losses from that year, they’d would have already been cash positive by the end of 2023.
That being said its the lowest risk way for your money to make money.
The S&P 500 is not the lowest risk way to make money. It is maybe the lowest risk way to make the most money. US Treasuries or even an FDIC high yield savings account (or NCUA for credit union) are far safer, but don’t earn nearly as much.
Thnx for adding context and keeping me in check. I’m just a dude not a professional.
No worries at all. I wouldn’t expect anyone to know this unless they follow markets personally or professionally. Even what is said on the news doesn’t lay this out plainly.
The weird part is everyone knows we’re headed for a market correction, but nobody knows when. I honestly thought it would have happened years ago, but it keeps going up. I’m a long term nonprofessional investor, so I’m okay with the downturn for myself when it eventually happens.
My suggestion might be more controversial than investing it into stable market funds.
$150k is an awkward amount of money. It’s not enough to support you for life unless you become extremely frugal and move to a developing country. If you’re under 40 invested it and forgetting about it would make your retirement more comfortable, but that assumes a stable market moving forward. The way the world is changing and the markets are behaving though, there is no guarantee of stable growth. Past performance is not a good indicator of future behavior, especially moving into the future.
Instead you could invest that money into things that will make you (and your family) more self sufficient and resilient to an unstable future. You could do things like invest in solar and other off grid tech for your home, buy acerage as far north and as close to a natural water source as you can, and many other things as well.
Obviously no one knows what the future holds but all indicators point to instability, scarcity, and generally hard times for all us little people. Guarding against that will make your life just as comfortable as letting the money grow, just in a different way
Do this. If you invest keep keep it diverse and liquid. Even German defense stocks are worth dirt in a world on fire. Like come on guys, we all knew infinite growth markets were a fairy tale.
If you don’t own your property, investing in energy infrastructure sounds like a bad call.
I am absolutely positive that is not what they were suggesting but you are correct.
The advice to invest in broad index funds is great, but there is risk. S&P500 got halved in the 2008 crisis.
The market is a long-term place to put money. You’ve got to be braced for the down years and not just starry eyed about the up years. The next crash could be Monday. Or not. Nobody really knows.
20 years from now, future you will be extremely grateful to today you for every dollar you invest in a broad index fund in the market. There’s never been a 20 year period in the market where that hasn’t been true. But that 20 years is a fucking bumpy ride. Treat your money in the market like it’s in the overhead bin and you’re in the window seat of a row full of grumpy strangers.
You’re clearly indecisive about your future plans. I think flexibility to adapt to any big life decisions, which seem looming is a key goal here.
Dave Chapelle explained it like this: “Money is the fuel for choices.” This windfall is your fuel. We can’t help you make the choices, but the money means you can make those choices now with little concern for cost or risk.
My advice:
At most invest half the money. Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard. Pick based on the color of their logos. They’re interchangeable for you.
Put the rest into some high yield savings account that will at least keep you treading water against inflation a little bit while you make choices.
Also from reading your other post, there’s a whole giant world of exciting and captivating activities that exists outside of the university system. Kinda like clocks in casinos, sometimes that can be hard to see from inside the school world.
The peak of 2007 was reached again in 2013. Not exactly the next day, but also not disastrously long.
What if we couldn’t have bailed out banks in 2008? What if the crash was 10x 2008? I don’t how 10x of half works and neither to these coked up AI bros handing 20b back and forth while we pretend that is an economy.
I’m sure the system will work beautifully when the next crash happens. The invisible hand will take our pensions, hand them to Altman and Musk and everyone will cheer.
All I’m saying is you need to be braced for it. I see all the graphs upthread talking about the gains. Those graphs are accurate, but don’t tell the complete story.
You need to at least contemplate how you’ll feel in the lizard part of your brain at 2am and how long six years can feel while you’re in them.
OP sounds like an inexperienced investor who plausibly needs not just a reminder but to hear those words plainly. That’s all.
It’s still the best advice.
Buy ETFs
