The 1500 house has been bustling with activity lately. Mindy and I have decided that we’re going to finish our current remodeling projects and then take a break. We’ll resume in the fall when the girls are back in school. Getting our place to a good stopping point has taken a considerable amount of effort.
Our home has 4 levels:
- Level 1 (Basement) This is mostly done, but I still have a bathroom to finish.
- Level 2 (Family room, office, and bathroom) I’ve already remodeled the office and bathroom. We’ve also put new flooring on the entire level.
- Level 3 (Living room, dining room, and kitchen) We’ve painted and installed new flooring. The kitchen will be a fall project.
- Level 4 (Bedrooms and bathrooms) 2022? 2023??
We spend most of our time on levels 2 and 3, so that’s what we’re focusing on. It will be nice not to live in a chaotic environment.
I was supposed to publish a post about our March money performance today, but performance updates take a long time to write, so you’ll have to wait until next week. I’m going with something short and simple today.
The $1,000,000 Question
My friend DGI tweeted this morning:
If you received $1 million today, what would you do with it?
— Dividend Growth Investor (@DividendGrowth) April 19, 2021
This question fascinates me. I’ll tell you what I’d do, but I also want to hear your answers.
First, I wouldn’t:
- Pay off the mortgage: Over the long-term, I’m more comfortable with having a mortgage and investing the money that’s not tied up in my house. I think that I’ll earn more than 3.5% (my mortgage rate) over a 3-decade time-period and having debt doesn’t bother me. It’s worked out well for us in the past.
- Buy anything: I just can’t think of anything that I could buy that would make me happy. I’ll pick up an electric vehicle at some point, but I’m holding out for technological improvements.
I would:
- Help someone: On a road trip last year, we drove through a Navajo reservation. The poverty was startling. And just to make life worse, the community was ravaged by COVID. Read more here.
- Invest in VTI and maybe a little QQQ: VTI because that’s the wise and rational thing to do. QQQ because I’m still obsessed with big tech.
- Invest the rest in Tesla and Dogecoin! Just kidding! We own too much Tesla already and owning Dogecoin would not allow me to sleep well at night.
How about you?
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It’s a good question, considering I wouldn’t step foot in my old office for a salary of $1,000,000….
I’d go ahead and get my forever home and move on. It’d probably cost me just over $1,000,000 to get everything I wanted, where I wanted, and to compete in this insane housing market.
The housing market is absolutely bonkers! We sold our last place at a record price for the street, Now, I’m wondering if we should have held on?
Your home renos are impressive. I have been working on a gutted bathroom as best I can. It is really tough squeezing that in around a job and a family. I guess I need to get rid of that pesky job thing…
Hey Dave, been there, done that! It. Sucked. Even in my current state of retirement, I find it difficult to find the time to do everything that I want to do. Life is good!
I love questions like these… And my answer seems to change every few months as circumstances in my life change…
Right now, I’d say I’d spend the money to get the final pieces of our basement reno finished up, which includes some expensive electrical clean-up and making me a laundry room I’m not afraid of. Of course, that wouldn’t take all of it, so I’d probably invest some of it for retirement, and then gift some of it to my step-daughter for her education, and maybe fund my kid’s education fund too. My husband would probably want to pay off our mortgage, but I’m sort of on the same page as you, where I see the numbers of our current mortgage rate, and I’d prefer to invest it…
Hi Jena! High-five for the mortgage decision! Haha, just kidding. Kindof. I find most would rather pay off the debt and it’s hard to fault them. Debt sucks no matter what.
PS: I could eat peanut butter right out of the jar too! (Another high-five?)
Maybe you’d be interested in doing my 10 Questions sometime? https://www.1500days.com/10-questions/
mmmm… peanut butter… hahaha!
I will definitely consider doing your 10 questions some time… sounds like it’s a long line up right now, so I’ll put it on the to-do list… we will see when I get to it. 😉
I would invest the majority in ETF stocks which are good for as, Europeans, like – and I write only the ticker- like EUNA, IUSN, IS3S, EUNL, IUSN, JPEE, all accumulated, and a small part in real estate: 2 rooms appartments for rent.
Nice.
FYI – this is only for entertainment purposes. I am not a Financial Advisor.
I think a balanced portfolio of 25% VTI, 25% QQQ, 25% Tesla, and 25% Dogecoin would probably workout ok. I actually use Schwab so I might split the %25% VTI into SCHD and SCHB. Might be able to live off the dividends for a bit while Dogecoin 100X.
Honestly, I would probably payoff the house and help kids a bit more with college. Invest the rest.
cd :O)
Dogecoin 100X, Ha! We livei n crazy times, so this wouldn’t shock me. Everything is inflated…
Thank you for linking the Navajo COVID article. I have a family member who did a 3 month tour as a travel nurse on the reservation at the height of COVID and it sounded horrific.
It was surreal driving through the reservation. Our phones went off a couple times, warning us of severe COVID danger. And the poverty. I felt like I was driving through a Stephen King book.
Uhh… Carl, what’re you talking about? It’s all about DOGECOIN!!!!!!!
Just kidding, I own none. If I had a million dollars…. Wow… I would buy a nice, professional, and expensive piece of paper with a very expensive pen to go along with it. Then I would hand write my letter of resignation and hand it to my boss!
And spend the rest on VOO 🙂
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Expensive pen and paper! That’s awesome! If you don’t like your boss, you could draw a naughty picture too! 🙂
Not at all hypothetical, I inherited one million dollars seven years ago. We spent a small amount to upgrade some toys and invested the rest with Personal Capital. It has done nicely. We already had plenty of money and I retired a couple of years later. It is nice having it as extra padding for the portfolio, but it wasn’t a life changing amount of money. Once you have enough no amount of extra money changes your life.
Oooh, what toys? A waverunner pops into my mind immediately, but what do I know?!??
This is great: “Once you have enough no amount of extra money changes your life.”
Mr. 1500 Days recently posted…The $1,000,000 Question
$1,000,000 would put us well over our FI number so I would pay off the mortgages on two rental properties $230k, invest the rest in index funds, Finish and sell our current HCOL live in flip house-hand in my notice at work and retire. Not that I will ever inherit a million dollars lol
You may never inherit it, but earning it is probably a little better. Because I worked hard for my dollars, I appreciate the hell out of them!
With an additional $1 million tax free today, I’d retire a few days short of 50.
My goal is 52, but 55 is more likely with kids in college and such.
So….we have that exact same model of house in south Denver (Centennial). I may need to get some renovation pictures from you to get ideas! Are you leaving the bannisters as-is or going to replace those – that is one of our current decisions.
And the million dollar question — I would buy out some of the shareholders in my family’s ranch in Wyoming so my parents and sister/brother-in-law who work there are beholden to no one!
It amazes me how many instances of this home I’ve seen now that we own it! There are 17 in our little neighborhood alone and we notice them all over Longmont.
Oh, we are definitely getting rid of the banister! A friend just showed me an awesome way to do a stainless steel cable railing for cheap. This is pretty much what it will look like.
In any case, I LOVE talking construction. If you’d like, make a trip north and we’ll show you what we’ve done so far and plan to do. Mindy and I are fully vaccinated.
That railing example is beautiful! I’m in the middle of trying to figure out how to do something like that myself, I’m doing a live in flip right now, and there are a few railings that need to be updated. Both for aesthetics, and my one and three year old. Do you have any resources you could point me to about doing something like that inexpensively?
So, do your own research, but after I’ve tested the cables for safety, this is what I’ll do: https://www.ikeahackers.net/2013/12/modernized-banister-with-dignitet.html
Note that in the post, the railing isn’t up to code. The opening must be less than 4″. I’ll probably go with something like 3″ just to be on the super safe side.
Oh my gosh, I may just take you up on that. We are DIYers to a certain extent, but no way near as advanced as you guys. My husband is thinking about tackling his first bathroom this summer, so some inspiration and emotional support would be great!
And…I might fan-girl a bit over Mindy – I love the BiggerPockets podcast 🙂
Oh, please take us up on the offer! We love to talk about this stuff and none of it’s that hard if you’ve studied what you’re doing and plan properly.
I think we may have lunch/drinks with another couple next Saturday on our deck. Ping me over email if you’d like to join us: mr1500 @ 1500days.com
Also, thank you for the nice comments about Mindy! I’m fortunate!
You know…I’m not too sure. I guess my answers would be pretty similar to yours.
Hopefully, give a bunch away to needy causes, maybe pad our retirement a little more. But really, it’s already *really* padded. Seems like a waste to put more in there.
It’s fun to think of a toy like a new Tesla as you mentioned. But it’s not like I couldn’t buy one of those now. And the reason I don’t would still be the same: the thing would just sit in the garage most of the time. We bike and walk. And it’s not like we really do that to save money. It’s just nicer.
Sure, it’d be great once in a while to take the Tesla out for a spin. Fun. But then it’d sit most of the time, and that’d eat at me. I’d think about how it’s being wasted and depreciating. The batteries, dug up from the ground with the associated environmental costs, just sitting in the floor panels depleting themselves. The lifetime of charge cycles slowly dropping away. And for what?
I feel like I struggle with this sort of idea, at this scale. And it feels kinda crappy to say a cool million wouldn’t really change anything. But I hope it’d change something for someone(s) else.
Now, $100M? I can think of how to spend that for myself if forced to. 🙂 Now we’re talking silly money—private jets, boats, and private race tracks. Rent an island. 😀
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Rent an island? Can I come to the party?
We’ll probably buy a Tesla because we take a lot of long road trips. Our current metal cages both have almost 200,000 miles on them, so I’m growing hesitant about taking them on very long trips. If Tesla could figure out autonomy, it would be worth it for that alone: “Hey car, take the kid to school and then come home!” I think we’re still a couple of years away from that though.
Dogecoin is going to Mars.
One million tax free? I think I’d finally retire. I’d start drawing $13K a month using the 4% rule.
13K/month! That’s a nice life.
Invest 600k in passive index funds, that is more than enough to bring us to FI. Spend 2 years travelling the world then use the rest of the money to buy a house with an acre or two and plant trees, grow veggies and keep animals for the rest of our lives.
Sounds like a pretty great plan!