If I Had 11 Million Dollars...

Earlier this year, a co-worker inherited an insanely large sum of money.  He and two cousins were given equal shares on the condition that they use the money wisely to help the family.  Basically, the interest amounts to $500,000 a year, paid in quarterly installments.

That's right.  Every 3 months, a check for $125,000 appears in his mailbox.

After letting a couple of checks sit in his drawer for a bit, he decided to quit his job and traveling the South Pacific... to put a roof on his parents' house, to arrange family reunions, and to talk so some other cousins to see how he can help them.

It's really kind of funny because this guy is VERY NICE but also the dude calculating his share of the tip when the group goes somewhere.  I guess that makes him the right guy for the job- someone with the brains to get the most bang for his buck and the integrity not to keep all that money in the bank for himself.

If I had $500,000 rolling in every year, here's what I would do first:

1. Sell our rental properties and suck up the capital loss.  (The idea of holding onto the real estate was to generate passive income, which I now have through this hypothetical inheritance.  Plus, the valuation is totally screwed up and I don't see us breaking even there within 30 years.)
2. Send an "anonymous" gift to a cousin who is struggling to work his way through college by paying his tuition as long as his grades are good.  (He is very smart but also quite dyslexic so I think he's working hard enough just by undertaking collegiate level studies.)
3. $13,000 annually to each of my parents until their house was paid off.  (Roughly 4-5 years.)
4. $13,000 to each of my nephews in a 529 plan administered by me, made in monthly installments.  Repeat for 4 years.  
5. Start an IRA for my brother. 
6. If they would let me, I'd gift the inlaws $13,000 annually until their condo was paid off too.
7. Quit work and go to law school.  (I would love to study tax law and real estate law so I can do multi-generational estate planning.)  I think tuition and fees are estimated at $14,000 annually.
8. Install a new roof, along with solar fan and heat reflective coating on my grandparents' house on Kauai.  After rebates, this will probably amount to $20,000.  (Small house, low slope roof.)

Even with the loss of income (remember, I quit work to go to school), this still covers significantly less than the interest I would be earning.  But at the same time, gifting more than $13,000 to a single person annually has tax implications.  Speaking of taxes, I guess that would actually reduce the net amount of money I have to play with annually.  But whatever was leftover would go toward paying down my own mortgage.

In follow on years, I would like to tear down and rebuild the 70 year old house we're living in and figure out ways to help out our cousins, aunts, uncles, etc.  Once my husband retired, I would love to do some long term travel abroad- maybe spend a summer in Japan or on a river tour of South East Asia?  Pull the kids out of school and "unschool" for a year?  Hire assisted living aides to help my grandparents live in their homes for as long as possible?

What would you do?

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