My burning question is what to do with an unexpected windfall that is equal to about 3/4 of a year’s income.
I’m single and I’d like to grow the money somewhat safely.
Mpithsalvation the group can give better insights if you would consider divulging a few more things. I'll give examples that may be rule of thumbs that others may or may not agree with, but concepts work for me.
Your relative age, decade of life, or even working retired, and general health as
1. some investments are longer term say 17 years for general stock market cycles, in other words if you buy and everything goes down and you hold this is historically about when you could making money again. Cycles seem shorter lately though.
2. some are intermediate say 7-10 years say like real estate or a REIT due to real estate boom bust cycles,
3. some are short term like a cd that basically loses against inflation historically but tends not to fluctuate as wildly short term. interest rates have their own cycles often manipulated by the FED.
What do you want the money for? Inheritance to family, charity, pay of the national debt ; ). Could even be an extended emergency fund. Or more commonly unsure, but some toys now, maybe some later, and grow what's left?
Probably everyone here has lost money at times and made money at times.
Winning is a lot more fun. I had a friend who was a gambler. He said while i called it stock investing, he thought of it as gambling. The difference he said was when he gambled historically the gambling house was the winner, and historically the people could make money from stock. However, in the book investors anthology it explained that prior to the railroads in the wild, wild west of the 1800's no stock was thought suitable for regular non wealthy individuals to own as too risky and even then, only railroad stock was considered safe enough to risk owning.
Now indexes are considered volatile but relatively safe over time measured in decades and individual stocks are still considered risky unless you sort of make your own index by having many companies in many areas and possibly in many countries. But even then, significant world economic downturns crossed borders easily.*
And if you don't invest your money, it will be like a solid air freshener. A big chunk of it is there when first opened and as it sublimates (dissolving from a solid to a gas) That remaining dried out core is your buying power being reduced by inflation.
With all that said, I and most everyone here invests somehow. Usually it is Real estate, stocks, CDs, treasuries, collectibles, gold, bitcoin, silver. But when you read more the list is much longer.
I think your friend was wise to refer you here. Even if they told you exactly what they bought and were 100% winning, you might not hear about when they sold just before a collapse.
I get too wordy, and I tend to be too cautious in investing, such that i miss out on many things. Find someone whose writing is understandable to you and whose beliefs about investing align with yours. Best of luck to you!
