We got a bunch of email at the start of the year, with a question that seems to be asked over and over again: what do you really do with a large sum of money other than swim in a gold plated pool? The truth is that you need to make sure that you build a financial blueprint that works.
The term financial blueprint might sound scary, or be a term that needs a professional to handle it, but that’s not true at all. You don’t have to feel like you can’t be in control of your finances. Building a plan for your life doesn’t mean that you have to be committed to it forever. Everyone knows that there are some natural twists and turns in life. You can’t just hope that everything will work itself out. By making your plan now, you’ll be able to adjust to changes in your life a lot better than if you were to just hope that everything will be alright and then do nothing about it.
Our belief is that you should use money as a tool first, and then enjoy it later. If you don’t have your bills caught up, why would you dream about a shopping spree? You’ll come home to the same mountain of bills greeting you instead of a cleaner home, so to speak. There’s nothing that says that you can’t have a little fun. However, you need to make sure that all of the essentials have been covered first. This will also let you enjoy the indulgences that you actually make. Some people never get to the stage where they actually get to enjoy the type of money that they come into. This makes them depressed and some have sadly even taken their own lives. It’s something that’s tragic, but it is what it is. You have to make sure that you make good choices now in order to avoid bad choices later.
Another thing that we would make sure to do is save some money. Don’t just keep it all in one account either. That’s a good way to start dipping into it, telling yourself that you’ll pay it back later. The truth is that you need to make sure that you are setting aside enough money to last you for a while. Even if you were to come into enough money to retire, you want to still work your regular job. You want to keep your life as normal as possible so that you can get used to having more resources.
What about figuring out how to deal with relatives and friends? Your family and friends are going to want to borrow money from you. The first thing that you need to realize about lending money to people you care about is that there is a strong tendency to not get the money back. People figure that you’re going to understand if they don’t repay you, and that you’ll still accept them. So the next time someone hits you up for money, think to yourself: is this someone that I will still care about even if they don’t repay me? If there’s going to be hard feelings over money, tell them that as a rule of thumb, you do not lend money to anyone. If they truly need money, they can always go with a payday loan or another short term loan to hold them over.
There are a lot of decisions that you’re going to have to make when it comes to acquiring a large influx of cash. As long as you keep your head on straight, there’s no reason that you can’t enjoy it. Good luck!