my advice: don't take financial advice from football message boards

Trust me, this thread was just to see how others think about what to do in my case. I will be meeting with a financial adviser next week.

The more I see on the news about the mess our economy is in right now does make me want to put it all under the mattress. Now they are even saying that Money Market accounts might not be safe.

alarmism. 99%+ of all banks in the united states are fine and well capitalized.

Call in to the Dave Ramsey show so he can tell you to pay off everything, stash away 6 months living expenses and blow the rest on a hooker.

buy aig

ummm..... so how did you come up with that fact?

Whistling past the graveyard?

No bank is EVER well capitalized. It's called "fractional banking" and is the foundation of banking in the U.S. That's why a run on a bank is so fast and furious. One minute you're fine, the next you're flat busted.

It's about impossible to give you sound advice without knowing what you have, your goals, what you inherited and your various expenses. But here is what I would do if I were you.

The first thing you need to do is talk to a CPA and have them tell you how much you have to pay in inheritance tax. That can eat you alive. Make sure you have enough to pay that when April comes.

Next, see what it will do to your income taxes. Talk this over with your CPA also. You may want to put it in something you can deduct. The last thing you want to do is make a killer investment just to have to pay it all to Uncle Sam.

Be careful when you talk to a Financial Planner. Ask them what their commission structure is. A lot of them only make money if they sell you something. This can create quite a conflict of interest in providing you with sound financial advice.

If it were me, I'd go to a company and just buy some diversified mutual funds. I think CNN Money has some good listings of mutual fund performance. You may have to get some help understanding the costs of the funds, but that would be a decent way to maximize your return without having someone else eat it all in commissions.

Another alternative, with the economy as ass as it is, is just put it all toward your mortgage if you have one.

I'm no genius, but you should have Went "All in" into mutual funds thursday morning.


If you don't know what you're going to do, and want time to figure it out....put it into short term CDs.
You'll at least make some money on a 5-7monthCD while you decide.

My advice would be to ingore the advice of people you do not know, and people who do not know what they're doing.

Find a professional to help you, and spend a lot of time learning about what vehicle you want to invest in. If you're well educated you'll make a lot better decision than if you have no idea what you're doing but you trust someone else.

The only person that fully cares about your money is you, take some time to learn about exactly what you want to do.

Put it under your mattress.

I've got a great business idea if I can just scratch a little more capitol....you could get 1 million %%%%% back on your investment.

PM me for my address.

Yeah, I sure as hell wouldn't be buying today after an almost 1,000 point swing to the upside in 24 hours. Kicking myself for not having the balls to pull the trigger yesterday morning.

Fortunately, the inheritance was sizable, under 200,000, but not enough to qualify for estate tax, which BTW, the estate has to be over 2 million this year (thank you Replubicans!). This was all covered with the lawyer I used to settle the estate.

Like I said earlier, it is just me and the wife, no kids. We make a comfortable living. I write software and the wife is a Admin Assistant for the Director of one of the schools at MU. We are not uber wealthy, but not hurting at all. Our total debt is well under a $100,000 including everything, cars, mortgage, etc. I think reason for that is because we don't have any kids (not by choice, medical). It has allowed us to pay things off or pay cash for big ticket items and keep our debt low. We are also fairly modest. We don't have fancy cars or a house that is way too big for us, things like that. We live a fairly simple life.

The passing of my mother was totally unexpected, thus why I am scrambling to figure out what to do with the money she left. But, even before this happened I had my financial plans set up so that I can retire from my current job at 55 - I am 45 now. My company will pay my health insurance if you have worked 25 years and reach the age of 55. When I said retire it just means from my full time current job. I would still do B.S. work here and there, but on my own terms.

I think what some are missing on what I was trying to get opinions on. Really, it is all about the current financial crisis going on. In some ways it is great because like people say - buy low. That seems to be available in the current market. But all of the doom and gloom that is being reported has me very concerned.

Would have been nice but the check wasn't cut yet.:cuss: