I've been lurking on these forums for a while now and finally decided to make an account. Here's my situation:
I'm married, in my mid 30's, 3 kids, and my spouse has the luxury that she chooses to not work and be the primary care giver for the children. I
love my work. It pays very well and is almost altruistic in nature. I have no desire to retire early, so this isn't a how can I retire early question.
I recently sold my business and the windfall from that is a bit north of $700,000 before taxes. Naturally the first thing I did was to destroy every ounce of debt I have except for my mortgage (will explain this in a bit). So no more car payments, credit cards, or any of that nonsense.
- After taxes and debt elimination I'm going to be sitting on about $400,000 from the windfall sale.
- My monthly "necessary" expenses run about $3000 per month and I budget in about $1500 per month for the finer things in life and stuff for the kids (instrument lessons, sports, etc).
- Now that I have paid off all the other debt I have about $7,000 / month "surplus" cash coming from my job.
- I also earn anywhere between $1000 - $2000 / month in royalties from some IP I own
- I am already set up at the job to max out my 401k contribution for the year.
- I generally get between $10,000 and $20,000 in annual bonuses from my employment
Up until the windfall, I had almost $0 in investments (I invested a bit north of $50k in the business a few years back instead of putting it in retirement, so that bet paid off!). I owe about $200,000 on my home, but I may have to relocate for my job soon... so I'm hesitant to pay off the mortgage until that is settled (or at least I don't see much benefit in doing so, am I wrong?).
My questions boil down to:
- What should I do with the windfall cash as far as starting investments? Note that I don't know anything about managing investments and since I am not retiring and have gainful employment skills I have absolutely no desire to spend time and effort to manage the money, so "set it and forget it" is going to be my preference.
- What should I do with my surplus income?
- How should I consider retirement/investment planning in my situation where I don't think (barring illness) that I'll ever fully retire? I'd be far more likely to do some contract work 3-6 months out of the year. I'm very confident I could pull in $30,000 - $60,000 a year doing that.
What am I missing? What else should I be considering?