[00:00:00] Eric Brotman: This is Eric Brotman, the host of Don’t Retire… Graduate!: The podcast that teaches you how to advance into retirement rather than retreating. Welcome to office hours where we answer listeners’ questions about personal finance, retirement readiness, and more. We received a question from George who asked, what would you do if I gave you a million dollars?
And George, first of all, I love that question and I hope you’re considering that very seriously. There’s a lot of different ways to answer this question because doing what I do for a living, I don’t know if what George is asking is what would you do if I gave you a million dollars to invest on my behalf?
Or if he’s saying, what would you do with newfound money if I gave you a gift for a million dollars. So in so much as I’m not sure what George means exactly by this question, I’m going to tackle it both ways. First way is if George decided he was just going to hand me a million dollars out of the kindness of his heart, here you go have a, a gift.
First of all, I would thank him in a million different ways, whatever I was able to do, of course. But secondly, if, if I were to come into some additional newfound surprise wealth, quite frankly, at this point I actually believe I’m at the stage of my life where I would put that towards all of the various financial priorities that have already been set for myself and for our family and so forth.
So I really don’t think. It would be a situation where I would go out and and splurge in any way. I don’t know that I, I, I, you know, I’m blessed not to have adverse debt that I would have to tackle at this point. And I think what I would do is I would, I would allow that to help on, on the path to accumulation and to financial independence and to being able to live in my own retirement when I graduate in a way that’s meaningful and where I can continue to be philanthropic and make a difference. So, George, if you’re contemplating making a gift to me of a million dollars, I will gladly accept.
If on the other hand, what you’re saying is what if, what if we hired your firm and we, you know, I, I gave you a million dollars what would you do with it? That is not a one minute answer naturally. That is something we’d have to give a lot of thought to. And so the first thing we’d have to do is understand what that million dollar. Means to you. In other words, is it a million dollars of the 20 million that you have, or is that million dollars every penny to your name?
Are you 30 years old or 70 years old? Are you still working and earning and, and do you have tax issues or are you gainfully retired and just doing some consulting or volunteering and you need to live on that million dollars? So, unfortunately naturally I couldn’t possibly answer that question with as little information as I have, but I will say if you’re in a position where you have money that you’d like to determine the best uses for it makes sense to look at that not necessarily in a vacuum, but to look at it from 50,000 feet. Look at the big picture. What priorities do you have? What goals do you have? What other resources do you have? What’s your family situation? Like? What is your health situation? Like? What are the things that are most important to you? Not just now, but potentially beyond your lifetime.
So, George, I, I would say that if you’re contemplating exploring financial advisory relationships, that is definitely something that that we do. And we’d be happy to talk to you if you’re contemplating making a personal gift to me, which we both know you’re not, but if you were, that would be. I think I hopefully have answered that question in as transparent a way as I’m able.
I thought this was a neat question because so many of the questions we received are technical in nature, and this was a little more esoteric, a little more fun. So if in fact you have a million dollars and you’d like to figure out what to do with it as part of your overall planning, we’d love to talk to you. If on the other hand this was more just to see what I would spend money on as a human being, I would say you’re going to be a little disappointed because I’m not I’m not going on a shopping spree. I’m going to wind up putting it towards all the other priorities already in my financial life and in my families. So I hope that answered your question, Georgia was a fun one and I thank you for asking it. If you’d like to send us a question, which we might answer in a future episode of office hours posted on our Facebook page or tweet us at @Brotmanplanning. If you like, what you hear, please subscribe to our podcast and leave a review on apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Don’t Retire… Graduate! is a book available in print, Kindle and audio formats and a workbook with all the exercises you need to help build your own financial freedom plan. For more information, go to Brotmanmedia.com or buy your copy and leave us a review on Amazon. Please also check out our online financial literacy education courses at bfguniversity.com.
Thanks for coming to office hours. Be sure to tune in for new content every Thursday. For now, this is your host, Eric Brotman, reminding you: don’t retire…Graduate!
[00:04:52] Narrator: Securities offered through Kestra investment services, LLC. KestraIS member FINRA SIPC investment advisory services offered through Kestra advisory services, LLC. Kestra AS an affiliate of Kestra IS. Kestra IS or Kestra AS are not affiliated with Brotman financial or any other entity discussed.
