Hi all,
My father is in the process of finally settling my aunts' relatively modest estate after nearly 5 years of headache and heartache (moral of the story, make sure your affairs are in order!)
Because there was no will, the estate is liquidated, taxes are taken, and my dad will essentially be disbursed a check for ~$200,000.
My parents aren't mustachian at all and don't have significant savings considering they are in their mid 60s but due to my dads' pension and social securities they're essentially at around $90,000 per year.
They've never had any kind of investments and don't know the first thing about it. Their entire method of operating financially is 'every month we get our pension / SS checks'. They're spenders / gamblers. They don't rack up huge debt but they also don't have a lot left over at the end of the month. If I were to let things be I'd imagine that $200,000 would sit in a bank account and be squandered within a few years.
SOMEHOW I've managed to convince them to let me invest their windfall and set up automatic disbursements so they have 'extra money' each month.
My question is: How would you handle this? I'm still in accumulation phase and am 100% equities, primarily in retirement accounts and am certainly not selling anything anytime soon. But for my retired parents, I'm less 'practiced' on the proper course of action since this will all be taxable. I don't want them to get killed by short-term capital gains, but I want it to be as hands off and automatic as possible.
4% of 200k works out to like $666/month. I communicated $500/month as a conservative estimate to them. They're happy with that amount. They don't want to leave it alone entirely to grow because they 'want to enjoy it', and that's their right.
Thanks for any and all advice.