This is the first time I’ve ever come into this kind of money, and want to take ~6 months to cool down and shore up my financial intelligence before making any moves. I’m deathly afraid of fucking up, and losing it all.
How do I handle the wiring process — send it all to one account? And how do I hold this money safely for the short term — multiple high-yield savings accounts, treasuries, money market, etc?
Any advice and stories of your own experiences would be greatly appreciated.
* the r/FatFIRE subreddit - many people have asked variants of the same question: https://www.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/comments/hf99ez/large_inher... . The r/personalfinance “windfall” page comes up occasionally: https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/windfall/ (it links to lots more similar questions).
* Past HN submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18600220
* If you don’t have any experience at all, you may want to start with an hourly financial planner who is also a fiduciary: https://www.napfa.org/find-an-advisor?q=&exp=Fee+Structure%3... (note: the “Hourly” filter is checked), https://www.napfa.org/financial-planning/fiduciary-101, https://www.forbes.com/sites/baldwin/2019/10/13/hourly-plann.... They’ll help you answer these questions and charge an hourly fee, much like an attorney would.
(The best-insured place to park it would be a bank/brokerage with multi-bank sweep account, like Fidelity’s FDIC-Insured Sweep: https://accountopening.fidelity.com/ftgw/aong/aongapp/fdicBa.... However, talk with a professional first.)
Make three lists of items - things you will want for yourself rest of the life, things you need to live, and things you want to invest for the time after you. Examples for each list: a good house in a good place, a set of low risk investments that will give you 250k p.a. perpetually, invest in a durable enterprise that will outlast you.
Then go about living as if nothing had happened.
When it comes to investment, choose boring non-exclusivist models. Aka. avoid maddoxes.