Probably the first thing I would do is to exchange them for gold-backed currencies.

Share it with the first person who replied to such a question

I would retire.

I’d buy a moderately nice place in the city I want to libe in, provably 1mil absolute max, depending on property taxes. I would then invest the remainder, ensuring that with relatively stable investments I could live comfortably on the interest going forward, with the interest covering property tax and my expenses.

Yeah that would be me too. Where I live you can get a pretty nice place for $400k+, so let’s say $500k off the principal, so $4.5 million left over. If you can get, say, 5% interest on that then you’re getting $225k per year for doing absolutely nothing. Even if you can only get, say 2% interest, that’s still about $90k/year which is not extravagant but doable.

90k a year without a mortgage is like, 150k a year with a mortgage, so that’s very doable even for a decent lifestyle of traveling and hobbies. At that I would probably pick up something like bartending or something that doesn’t make much but would be interesting as a part time job. Slinging beer at a brewery could be a fun way to make some spare cash

Start a vegan commune.

Set the kids up and then move to Uruguay

Nothing crazy. I wouldn’t try to invest it someway to get mo money, beyond an interest bearing savings account, because chances are good I’d lose it.

Pay off my house. Travel a bit--France, Spain, maybe SEA for the food and to experience something different. Buy a camper van and visit the old campgrounds in CA and OR my family had vacations at when I was a kid. Leave as much as I could to my son after that.

Disclaimer: Not an investment advisor and not your investment advisor

Nothing crazy. I wouldn’t try to invest it someway to get mo money, beyond an interest bearing savings account, because chances are good I’d lose it.

• investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/…/bnd
• investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/…/vt

The first one is a Vanguard US bond fund that pays around 4% to 5% annual dividend on a monthly basis, and the second one is a Vanguard Total World Stock Market fund (captures a piece of the entire world market). A savings account now is paying around 0.38%. So on $5mil if you put it all in BND it’d pay around $200k annually. In a savings account it’d pay $19k, and savings accounts are only insured up to $250k.

The bond fund is taxed as ordinary income, so you could sit down and decide if something like VTEB would be better than BND (lower yield but 0% federal income taxes). It really doesn’t take much to beat a savings account, and it doesn’t take long at all to start working around taxes.

Setup a business idea I’ve had since I was young. I don’t think it would work in the us so I’d try somewhere in Asia.

i’d fund a militia to start guerrilla warfare against the bourgeoisie.

Put it all on red

You are either a degenerate gambler or already a billionaire \s

God gave it to me

I’d go to your table and put it all on black

Are you going to split it afterwards?

Pay off the house, catch up on repairs, then sit on it because it’ll fuck my insurance and be gone paying for medical stuff in maybe ten years

Own a house, then business as usual

I would buy a house, and go to university to study physics.

Drop it in investments and work for another year. The extra year of work is so that I can get the investments to move to long term capital gains tax rates. With that sorted, I can now retire. Even a simple index fund often returns an average around 7%. So that’s ~$350,000/year. Pull $200,000 and leave $150,000 for growth. Exact numbers will fluctuate, but it will be close. I’m going to get taxed at something like 12.5%, or about $25,000 leaving me $175,000 to live on. This isn’t monthly vacations in Tahiti money, but it’s a pretty comfortable living, if I’m not stupid and wasteful. If I really want to stretch things out, I can always move to a lower cost of living country. Though that often carries personal risk with it, and I don’t know if I’d want that extra stress. Numbers would also change based on how that original $5mil got taxed. If it’s something like a lottery win, it would shave the numbers down a good bit by taxes.

I would buy a brick house on top of a forested hill. My nearest neighbor would be a 20-minute drive away.

I would work on my magnum opus of tabletop rpg rules, which I would convert into a video game.

I would commission art and fund the construction of shrines to the four tezcatlipocas.

Fund owl habitat preservation.

I like your style!

Hire a fiduciary and pay off my debts, which I think currently is just my mortgage.

I wouldn’t quit my job straight away. I like my team and I’m learning rapidly having them around.

Travel more, and invest in my hobbies, picking up a couple others that currently are out of reach.

The remaining 14.5 million would grow.

Damn, I gotta get one of those negative mortgages

Lol, for some reason I thought it was 15 mil, not 5. If you do happen to find one of those illusive mortgages though, hmu.

Double it and pass it to the next

Get set for retirement and give away a few million. I don’t need that much money, and it could really make a difference in other peoples lives

Buy a plot of land with a nice view and construct one of those nifty passive houses. Also get my teeth and knees fixed, put together a nice home lab, and go travelling. Split the surplus between retirement savings and donating to causes I find worthy.

Use the “4% Rule”, this would be an inflation adjusted $200K per year every year (more or less, the “4% Rule” is more of a great observation than a rule).

I would live on a third, give a third to my family, and a third to local organizations.

The 4% rule is kind of crappy and even it’s creator has modified it.

What do you mean? It is great for planning purposes.

I am well versed in it, but “crappy” arguments split both in “too low” and “too high”.

Alternate between going full retirement mode by turning the money into $200k a year and planning for a mass collapse by buying farmland tucked away in the Appalachian Mountains.

Buy real estate, bitcoin and some type of food truck

I’d pay it all as a voluntary additional tax payment, the government would do a much better job than I could myself in making sure that the money really benefits the entire community.

Are you in a country that does good? If America then that dumbest thing I ever read.

If you really mean that I envy you. I’d like to live in a place like that

Tax includes military spending more often than not. If I was you I would find other ways of donating.

If the US had universal healthcare then I’d already retire. As is, $5m isn’t safe to retire with health issues/needs

$5m would afford a solid health insurance plan monthly premium that wouldn’t make that big a dent if your $5m is well invested.

That assumes that one is insurable…

I would purchase 3 to 5 homes in the US.

Firstly pay tax. Then donate atleast 30% of remaining amount. Then put remaining amount in mutual funds which can generate better alpha and do work that I enjoy or like and retire when I feel like

Pay my mortgage and invest

Exchange it for Euros

Same.

I’d buy a mountain and build a nature retreat so friends and family could visit. I’d probably only spend a million or two on it, after the land and off grid infrastructure I’d build it myself, making cabins and gazebos over time. I’d curate the land to be full of fruit bearing trees and make animal friends

Then I’d make more friends and invite people to stay. I’d look for damaged people and offer them a refuge from the world for as long as they want

I’d probably buy a significant amount of silver, yuan, and euros as insurance. The rest I’d hand over to a financial advisor after taking time to find someone I can trust, then I’d try to never think about money again

I’d spend most of my time enjoying a life surrounded by nature and friends who are free to live without worries. Travel occasionally to meet new friends and see more of the world, but mostly I’d just be happy to live freely

No I didn’t.

5 Million? O.K. let’s roll.

60K for university education, should be plenty.

40K go to paying various bills for friends and family

100K for various charities

1.8M go to building a non-profit high tech eco commune in Argentina or a similarly climatically stable place with features inspired by FM 2030’s book Upwingers in regards to future living

300K go to anti-militarist causes

500K go to various vegan groups

200K go to building school projects in developing regions

1M are invested into a photovoltaic power station from which I will extract a $6000 rent p.a. max with the rest of the proceeds going to a fund for disabled people and disadvantaged youths

Last million:

100K for travels

100K for a communal homelab that provides hosting for FLOSS and anti-conservative politics

200K for hackspaces

250K for unions, they better have some conviction though

350K for cruelty free research on rare diseases

Immediately invest a million into China directly for Chinese citizenship, than 4 million via wealth management companies so I and my children can live off of dividends for the rest of time in China.

Even 1% dividend monthly on 4 mil is $40,000 a month.

I imagine if they ever actually do the communism thing they keep promising, you’ll be on the chopping block since you’d be a capitalist by definition, and not even the useful kind (that starts a company that rakes in money from abroad).

1% monthly is also a craaaazy high rate. Guaranteed not to last for the rest of time. A tenth of that is manageable and should carry your immediate family in a low cost of living part of China no problem.

“Capitalism is when you invest, and the more investment you have, the more capitalist you are” Gootcha, whatever you say bucko.

I’m moving to Europe.

Move to China

after i pay for language lessons and start talking to real estate agents who know what the term “community bottoms” means. :p

5mill could pay a lot of poor people to hurt rish people…

Invest in one of the two startup projects im working on

And watch that 5 mil turn into 5k overnight 😎

I’d retire.

Same

Exchange them with euro.

I’m a developer and I love it, but hate the current state of the field. I would quit my job and start my own company. It would be a lot less scarry if I didn’t have to worry about making money. I could just make the things I wanted.

Leave my country, buy an old decrepit spooky mansion in a non-Western country, and spend the rest of my days pretending to be a ghost whilst using the remaining funds for small acts of charity for the nearest town/village. I wanna see if I can create a legend.

I’ll tell you what I’d do, man: ten chicks at the same time, man.

I’m not sure how I would distribute them. I just want one at each limb, one works on my scalp and neck, and one on my sore back and shoulder. Still it sounds very crowded. Let’s just have two.

Pay off our mortgage, pay my wife’s student loans, give my parents $1M, buy my sister in law a home to live in rent free, save the rest for my baby girl, 50k invested for all my nieces and nephews, and have another baby.

Get 3 week early access to the episodes of a youtube series

Pay off the house, and all debt, buy a Slate truck and a 30 year old Subaru. Install solar and a battery. Build an Earthship. Buy tools and other supplies at auction. Invest the rest. Shelter those in need. Tip well. Hunker down and prepare.

Put it with rest of investments. Wait a year till capital gains kick in then probably retire on interest.

Invest in opening a chain of actually good pizza restaurants in San Francisco.

I have always maintained that my concept for a pizza restaurant would work. It’s called Send Pizza. It has an app with one big button, that says Send Pizza. If you press that button, they will send you a pizza. No menu, no options, no customisation .

Each day, there is a different type of pizza. If you want pizza, that’s the one you can have. If you don’t want that type of pizza, you don’t ask for pizza from us. Vegetarian pizzas on Monday, Wednesday and Sunday.

Want three pizzas? Press button 3 times.

No more drunk decision fatigue or bickering over what sort of pizza. No more messed up orders. Simple, fast production line, because each day, staff are only making one kind of pizza, all day.

Wake up. Hungry. Send pizza.

pay off my parents house, and fix up the stuff weve neglected. finally upgrade my ram lol

Create a non-profit, make music, create a design studio, fund local collectives, invest on my retirement, maybe do a masters degree…

mm retire i guess and dont tell anybody

Pay off the house I live in, put 100k in trust for each of 4 family members, buy a much larger house and hire a paid staff of 3 and 1 volunteer and make it into a free shelter for single mother victims of DV and their children, set up a trust to pay for the education of both the mothers and children for the duration of their residence, and probably buy a commercial property so my mother can open a charity shop in it as she’s always wanted, and bank the rest for some interest. I’d still keep doing my job because it’s not very hard. Maybe negotiate down to 4 days a week.

I’m pretty financially comfortable and so are the members of my family that I care about. I’ll be inheriting two houses when my separated parents die, so I’m not really sweating for retirement money.

Pay off a bunch of debt. Invest the rest.

It’s a boring answer, but it’s true. I’ve had a stable financial situation rug-pulled from under me three or four times already in my adult life. I’m sick of it.

I don’t even want to be financially stable for my own sake. I want to be able to tell my kids yes when they ask to eat at McDonald’s more than once a week. I want to be able to help everyone I know who needs it. I want to be able to pay for my wife to fly back home to her grandma’s funeral without worrying about if I need to sell a car to pay for it.

Pay off debts. Invest the rest structured in trust funds for my kids. I don’t got many years left. I’d rather they get it while they’re young enough to enjoy it and not let it all get siphoned away by the “end of life” care system in America.

Pay off my parent’s debt, retire them, pay off my own, spend my days reading comic books and messing around in Blender. Stay at my cheapish area, have my parents sell their house and move to a bigger one. Travel more since I’m near an airport. Avoid anything too expensive and live mostly the same lifestyle so it doesn’t run out. Invest in the safest thing possible since at 5 mil youd be making 6 figures a year letting it sit.

Ppl underestimate how much having money already keeps you rich, at 5 mil youd make at least 100k a year letting it sit, with close to the same lifestyle you have now you’d live very comfortably. Now if you start buying access to private clubs and sht, thatd run out fast.