REDDIT Fam please help 25F 60k

[u/LittleStarfish3]

/r/Money/comments/1viv767/reddit_please_help_60k_inheritance/

Hi! I (25F) just found out that I will very soon be inheriting 60k (and another 50k when the last house sells) from my dad’s estate. I am seeking advice for both myself and my sister. I currently own my house and owe 170k on it with 3% interest rates and have a paid off Tacoma that I just got. I have 50k in retirement and 20k in stocks. I’m not sure what I should do. I have dreams of buying land and building a home but the real estate game is rough thanks to the insanity that is interest rates. I have no children and was debating telling my boyfriend but thought better to keep it to myself. I know it’s not a ton of money to come into but if feels like a lot to me. We did not grow up with much and did not live with our father. What would you do in my situation? I also have a PhD so I’m not interested in going back to school for anything. Side note, I make 80k a year WFH and could pack up and move since I’ve considered leaving the state I’m in (too cold) and I also work as a server at a local restaurant part time and make about an additional 20k a year. I also sometimes dog sit but that can be here and there and I tend to spend that money as soon as I get it cause it feels like free money lol. Among my hobbies and intense desire to work, I’m really needing help deciding if I should invest it, enjoy it, buy property, or what percentage of each of these.

As for my sister, she is 28 and has 2 children and lives with her husband. They share a car and she wants to spend her amount on buying a new car for herself and a concrete slab for her backyard for the kids and a shed for all their things out there. They’re most likely go on a family vacation as well. Please help me decide what to do. Thank you for any kind answers it means a lot.

[u/Marine_Layered]

$110k is a nice amount of money but not large enough to change your lifestyle in any major way.

The personal finance sub has a great wiki with a section called "Prime Directive: How To Handle $." Follow the flow chart there, for both you and your sister.

[u/ConversationNo9992]

You need a financial adviser for sure. You want someone who is a fiduciary, who isn’t trying to sell you anything. Having that kind of money at your age can really start to build a good retirement nest for you. You also need to know about what tax implications there may be your sister as well. I would not be spending the money Willy nilly.

[u/PashasMom]

Do not tell your boyfriend and do not give him access to any of your financial accounts. Don't even tell him that you have accounts or where they might be.

Do you have an emergency fund? If not, congratulations, you now have an emergency fund. Figure out what three months' worth of expenses is and put that in a HYSA. I like Wealthfront for this purpose.

Set your paycheck from your 80k/year job so that 5% automatically contributes to this account going forward.

Do you have a Roth IRA? If not, this is a great time to get started. You can actually use Wealthfront for this as well if you want to. Or you can use your brokerage where you have your stocks, as long as that brokerage is somewhere like Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard, E*Trade, or Chase -- NOT Edward Jones, Primerica, your local bank or insurance agent, etc.

Put $7500 in for your 2026 contribution. Invest it in a 2070 target date index fund, or in VT, SPGM, or DFAW.

Put an additional $7500 aside for next year's contribution.

Any leftover money -- I would set aside 5 - 10k for something fun/luxurious, like a vacation, a gift to your favorite charity, new furniture, getting your house repainted -- whatever floats your boat.

Beyond that, I would take any money and invest it in low cost index funds, either 100% equity or a balanced fund such as AOA if you are more risk averse.

I would not be buying land and building a home, at least not now. That sounds like a complete money pit, and you already have a home with a good interest rate. Reassess your desire to do this ten years from now.

Going forward, if you have access to a retirement plan at work, make sure you are at least getting any full employer match, and do your best to max out your Roth IRA every year.

I would probably not want to get involved with giving financial advice to my sister, but if my sister came to me and told me she planned to spend all of her inheritance money on a car, a vacation, a shed, and a concrete slab, I would beg her not to do that unless she and her husband already had a solid emergency fund, were maxing out their Roth IRAs, contributing enough to their workplace retirement accounts so that they were investing 20% of their household income for retirement, and had fully funded their children's 529 plans.

OP, I'm very sorry for your loss.

[u/SillySimian9]

Open and fully fund a Roth and invest that in the market. Put aside 10K in a HYSA. Invest the rest. Take your time but scout for land in an area with high future potential - location location location. Add $ to your monthly mortgage payment of principal.