WSOP Windfall... What is a boy to do?!?!

[geormiet]

Here is what i would do in your shoes:

I would file as a pro and max out my sep ira contribution - 44k.
I would put 100k in SP500 index
I would loan out the emaining 66k on prosper.

[mephisto]

All good recommendations in this thread so far except for real estate. Imo I would put some of your cash into gold right now in order to diversify the risk of the dropping dollar and economic slowdown.

[bigbootch]

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How long are u looking to invest the money for?

Index funds would probably be your best option if you are not familiar with the stock market.

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The question isn't so much whether to put it into index funds or not, it's more what asset classes of index funds to put it in. Broadly speaking, some of the major ones you may want to consider are: money market, bonds, domestic stocks, and foreign stocks.

Regardless of which you end up going for, I would highly highly recommend opening up a Vanguard account and buying their funds. Vanguard is the best, and it's not close.

That said, I would probably recommend 50/50 split of money market and bonds. You should do the math and figure out which would be better for your situation, tax-exempt or not. For money market, the two are VMSXX/VMMXX, and for bonds the two are VWIUX/VBTLX.

To address what everyone else here is telling you, to put it into stocks (i.e. sp500 index fund), well you can do that but I wouldn't recommend it. Malkiel and Bogle wrote some very good books, but to focus simply on those works and ignore all other factors would be short sighted.

[bigbootch]

[ QUOTE ]
All good recommendations in this thread so far except for real estate. Imo I would put some of your cash into gold right now in order to diversify the risk of the dropping dollar and economic slowdown.

[/ QUOTE ]

Buying gold makes absolutely no sense for Jurollo here. Historically, gold has very poor returns (look at what it returned in the past 50 years compared to the sp500), and it has very high fluctuations in the medium term. So basically, low EV and high variance.

Therefore, only reason to own it would be to: 1. speculate, and 2. to hedge. Jurollo isn't interested in pure speculation (or he'd be buying individual stocks), and hedging doesn't really make sense either. Why buy gold to hedge against a falling dollar? It would make more sense to buy euro / yen to do that. And why buy gold to hedge against an economic slowdown? If you meant a domestic economic slowdown, it would be better to buy eurostoxx or something to hedge against that; if you meant worldwide, it would be better to short the sp500 to do that.

[By-Tor]

i'm not going to pretend to know what i'm talking about on this, but can someone please explain to me why buying a house when prices are down is a bad idea?

in years gone past in CA, when a house went up for sale in a desirable location, it was basically a fire sale with people offering much more then the asking price.

Now, that you can actually in many cases get in at below the asking price...it is the "wrong time"?

make zero sense to me.

[bigbootch]

[ QUOTE ]
i'm not going to pretend to know what i'm talking about on this, but can someone please explain to me why buying a house when prices are down is a bad idea?

in years gone past in CA, when a house went up for sale in a desirable location, it was basically a fire sale with people offering much more then the asking price.

Now, that you can actually in many cases get in at below the asking price...it is the "wrong time"?

make zero sense to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you look at real estate for the past 100 years or so, they have broken even after inflation. Despite what you may hear on MSNBC or whatever, yes it's true, historical data indicate real estate prices don't beat inflation.

That said, there are still plenty of reasons one might want to buy real estate. My point is that it is by no means an automatic "real estate is better than any other investment" decision as most Americans believe.

[jaydub]

[ QUOTE ]
i'm not going to pretend to know what i'm talking about on this, but can someone please explain to me why buying a house when prices are down is a bad idea?

in years gone past in CA, when a house went up for sale in a desirable location, it was basically a fire sale with people offering much more then the asking price.

Now, that you can actually in many cases get in at below the asking price...it is the "wrong time"?

make zero sense to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Think of it like this. Let's say the price of silver doubles over a 6 year period. It then drops 10-20% over a year. Is it a bargain? Is it cheap?

People have gotten silly with the whole homes are investments crap. For the vast majority of the population, a home is a place to live and a forced savings plan.

J

[Maulik]

What cars are you considering?

[Jurollo]

[ QUOTE ]
What cars are you considering?

[/ QUOTE ]
I am actually going to buy a Toyota Camry Hybrid. Baller? No. Pretty [censored] awesome car thats basically a Lexus with incredible gas mileage? Yes.

[CharlieDontSurf]

When u won did u just get a check or big bricks of cash?

What was your bankroll like prior to that?

Are u going to sweeten the pot in the Caldarooni's Keeper FFB League?