Okay! Here is my story I’m 42. I’ve never really thought about money much and I am now in a position where I need some advice. I have a really great job in Canada as a teacher. I have 15 more years of work until I can retire with a great pension. My spouse owned a restaurant for 28 years and just sold it for a very small profit. She does not have a pension or savings, but she will be working for at least 6 more years (she’s 59). For 15 years, I have commuted 40 km each way to my job. We have recently decided to sell our house and move closer to my work. We have decided to rent an apartment because the real estate market where we are moving is insane. We also want to see what life is like without shoveling, mowing, maintenance, etc. We have a fair amount of debt. Our plan is to pay off all of our debt with the proceeds from the house (our debt is approx. $175000 including mortgage, lines of credit, loans, credit cards). We had a few misfortunes that ate up our savings, so we have little (approx. $10000 in mutual funds). The cards have already been destroyed and the line of credit will be closed. After everything is paid off, we will have no debt and will have approximately $240000 cash. My question is- what do we do with it? Do we invest it? Buy real estate? If we invest it is there a way to get monthly income from that? Despite a lot of reading and researching, I’m still not sure how to manage that chunk- which is all we have. I can’t screw this up. Help!
