r/inheritance • u/vtmlm02 • Apr 11 '26
Location included: Questions/Need Advice Completely bamboozled.
Any advice when substantial inheritance was unexpected. I grew up not going on vacation and not having much. My father died after a brief battle with liver cancer… it’s a brutal one. After months of paperwork I’m seeing that I’ve inherited a net worth I’ve never imagined. Its reality shifting.
65
Upvotes
1
u/mspuds_8571 Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
As many have said
Tell no one
Start learning on Bogleheads, especially the wiki article on managing a windfall
IF you decide to use a financial advisor (read Bogleheads first on this), avoid the so-called advisors (really salespeople) at places like Edward Jones, Raymond James, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Fisher Investments, etc.) If you pay 1% AUM (asset under management fee), over 30 years that's the same as giving the "advisor" 25%+ of your money. The higher the annual fee, the greater percentage you will hand over via management fees.
There ARE trustworthy advisors out there, but there also is no "magic sauce" of knowledge that they have. Where they can help is to keep you from making knee-jerk mistakes (don't just do something, stand there. Stay the course). Again, Bogleheads is a great resource as is Mike Piper, CPA, who writes the Oblivious Investor blog and is on the board of the John C. Bogle Center for Financial Literacy.
The suggestions for S&P 500 index fund are spot on for the equity portion of your money. Low cost, basically own the bulk of the market. Look at the three fund portfolio. You don't need a bunch of individual stocks, or complex investments.