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What Do You Do With Large Amounts Of Money?

Suppose you win 100 million. What do you actually do with it? Banks only guarantee 250,000. Do you have to invest it? Is there anywhere you can just let it sit and draw interest?

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  • Depends what you want to do with it. If you want to keep it liquid, you can just keep it in bank accounts in major banks. Split it across several major banks. If they all go under, your problems will be far bigger than money. You can also have multiple savings accounts with each bank to garuntee 250k in each one and earn maximum interest. I have 6 savings accounts with my bank each with ~200k in it. If the balance exceeds 250k, the interest rate dtops down from 4.25 to somethink like 1.15.

    If you dont need to keep it liquid, you buy a stable asset like land. You might choose to buy a bumch of houses and apartments in the city, but that comes with strata fees and property management etc. Plus, being a landlord investing in residential property makes you a shitcunt. In my case, I purchased rural land. I purchased land adjacent to nature reserves, with about 450ha of arable land, 110ha of forested land, and 85ha of salt damaged land. Im remediating the 85ha of salt land, and strategically planting out about 10 trees/year/ha on boundaries of my arable land to reduce soil erosion and degradation. I lease the land to a couple of organic grain growers who work the land. At any given year about 1/3rd of my arable land is fallow. (Note tgat im not a farmer by trade, I just think its a good, sustainable asset that I can use to directly improve the environment)

  • Speaking generally: investments.

    Diversifying stocks and bonds mainly, and each asset should be diversified from the others of the same type (eg; tech stocks counter balanced with things like agriculture or energy or something that's also stocks but not in tech - Rinse and repeat for bonds, etc). Mainly long standing assets should be prioritized, stuff that has historically paid well in dividends and will hopefully continue to pay well.

    The majority of your assets should be stored in this manner.... This will help the long term value of your money. Above and beyond that, the assets will counter balance eachother if they're properly diversified, as one sector under-performs, another should be performing better and make up the difference, so payouts should be fairly steady.

    At the end of the day, those investments will make up your passive income, which any sufficiently rich person has in spades. I wouldn't pretend to put numbers on any of this, whether to say what percentage of winnings should go to what or in what volume, and certainly nothing fixed, if you're not sure how to get any of this finance stuff handled yourself, there are plenty of investment firms and personal wealth management companies that will gladly take your money so you can make more (so you can continue to pay for their services), and who will be more than happy to get you started.

    Moving away from stocks, bonds, and passive income, you'll want to focus on fixed assets. Having your money invested into things. What those things are is up to you, but I would advise to focus on getting a good property instead of other assets, since real estate tends to be one of the few things that continually increases in price over time with few exceptions. Compared to other investments (eg, stocks and bonds) unless the property is a specific "income property" aka, something you're renting/leasing out, it's not the best investment for growth, but having a home that you own and being able to live more or less rent free, helps you hold onto your money, rather than blow it on a place to live. A house will be a rather large one time investment that will at least hold its value, and you'll get a place to live out of it. Cars tend to lose all value in a matter of years to decades, and there's a high likelihood that they could be destroyed through use. So cars are generally expenses, not investments with few exceptions. So buy vehicles with the understanding that you may not get your money back at the end of the life of the vehicle; IMO, that applies for almost any vehicle including planes, boats/yachts, etc. So spend wisely in regards to transportation.

    For everything else, out of your passive income create a salary for yourself, and set aside some "in case of shit" money from your year over year dividends. Reinvest/grow your funds with whatever you're not paying yourself in salary. The amount is up to you, but I'd say if you can afford to live on less than half of the payout, and reinvent the other half or more, do it. The in case of shit funds would be for incidentals like your car getting totaled, or needing to replace the water heater/HVAC on the house, or something unexpected you just need instant cash for.

    Up front, you should be paying off debts and living within the salary you set for yourself.... Doing everything in your power to keep your investments intact and growing for your own future. It's fine to go on vacations or cruises or whatever you want, as long as you stay within your self defined salary, and you're not just blowing through the capital of your investments. Long term, you're going to be able to live very comfortably without needing to worry about money which, honestly, is the only outcome that should be worth anything.... That safety and security is extremely valuable. Do not throw it away on a few years of indulgence.

  • I'd give most of it away or start some kind of foundation. Having that much money, amongst all the poverty here in South Africa, it would just feel immoral.

    The money I'd spend on myself would be to own an average middle class home, a normal car, and maybe a project car if I could get some utility from it. And on paying off medical debt and spending it on medical treatments to minimise my chronic back pain. And to set up a fund that pays me enough every month so I never have to worry about hunger or not having enough money by the end of the month to do stuff.

  • Real estate and Stocks/ETF to park it. Get my family nicely set up. Then build an under the radar luxurious home with good research equipment so I can do science without all the hassle in academia. Also some charity living projects for the poor in my area.

  • Pay off my debt, give 10 million to churches and charities of my choice, give a million to my parents and another million to my in-laws, give myself a million, and take the remaining 87 million and start a non-profit that aims to fight climate change and eradicate world hunger.

  • As recent events have shown, the FDIC guarantee amount isn't a hard limit (at least in the US). That said, the name of the game is to keep accumulating capital, so you just use the money to make investments. Maybe you have some specific ideas about which investments to make, but typically you just hire a company to do this for you. What you don't do is spend it. Instead, you use those investments as collateral on lines of credit and that is how you get your spending money. This way, you get useful cash flow while minimizing your taxable income.

    An important thing to do is launder your reputation by contributing to charities and causes and making investments that have popular appeal. It's cheap insurance to make sure the working class doesn't bear too much resentment for you specifically if a revolution ever does materialize.

  • investment opportunities are endless really. I'd buy real estate & develop it for resale - relatively easy profits there. US FDIC only insures up to 250k per account, but there are other country's banks out there - the Swiss banking system was a popular choice in the past but I've heard that the Cayman Island banking system is good as well. invest in tech - small businesses, as a few tens of millions isnt going to go that far, but 100 mil is good seed capital.

    or, shit, just retire on it & pass the remains to your descendants.

  • Buy more hard drives and some 10gig networking gear. Cut my hours at my job to like 20 a week

  • pay my personal expenses with it but keep working a job. donate to the communist party of my choice, so we can have a legal defense fund and do fancy projects that we can't afford now and can help out comrades in need. donate to every strike fund in the world that will accept a payment. maintain a large list of such funds. donate money to battered women's shelters and to give direct aid to poor and homeless around the world. repeat until the money runs out. as far as the technical aspects of how to manage money that large without losing it due to bank system failure, i guess i could open thousands of accounts in different banks and put 250,000 in each of them or do some other strategy. ill take off a few months from work to research how to do it and talk to people who know more about the subject until i have a solid plan for that.

  • I'd buy a nice house somewhere a bit wild and in the middle of nowhere on the south coast of either England or Wales, something old with character and a big garden with a good pub nearby. I'd also buy a classic wooden sailing yacht and put enough funds aside to maintain her as well as kitting her out for serious passage-making. When I'd done that I'd figure out how much money I need to make work optional for the rest of my life and how much would keep my family comfortable in an emergency, as well as a small 'shit hits the fan' fund kept in something you don't need electricity to access like gold just in case. I'd then donate the rest to charity, the bulk to enviromentalist lobby groups and charities directly helping people (the RNLI comes to mind for example) but also to a few niche causes like keeping the ailing pirate radio ship Ross Revenge afloat and starting a breeding programme to save the highly endangered otterhound. I'd also like to have a few documentaries made, and I'd drop a few content creators I like some donations too.

    Honestly all I really want to do is go sailing and not have to deal with the rat race, I don't want to live an oligarch's lifestyle and I definitely don't want the sort of attention and arseache that money would bring you. That money would be far more effectively used for good in the hands of others so I'd end up donating the majority of it, I suspect on the order of 80% of it at least.

  • put it in the too big to fail banks, those are likely to be bailed out completely regardless of FDIC limits.

    if you give me the money, ill put 3mill in a bank and give the rest to certain political organizations....

  • A lot of wealthy individuals "park" their money in things like real estate and art. For the art, they safely pack it away in warehouses. There's a whole industry that'll do it for you. A lot of them dont even see the art. It's just a wealth parking vehicle.

    Another avenue is starting one or more non-profits and philanthropy organizations for the money.

    And another is a living trust, to avoid probate when you die, to maximize the inheritance for your surviving beneficiaries.

  • Invest in my people (friends and family), especially the ones I care about. Not exactly a win win but it's basically a wash in the worst case and a super win in the best case.

    If they succeed in their endeavours, I get partial ownership in it or it can be a loan (whatever they prefer) and if they run away with the money, it's a cheap price to pay for setting up someone I cared about with a better life and finding out they were not trustworthy.

    Also, if spread around enough, there will be enough people who will be thankful to you for improving their lives that they'll be there for you for a lifetime.

    This is all after you do the usual investments with some amount and also keep enough aside from any ideas you want to try to bring to fruition (you'll want to do something at least after all)

  • 100m $ !? Other than buying all things I and my family need, I may invest a in real estate that I could rent, and put the rest in the bank.

149 comments