My wife and I (in our 30's) are in an extraordinarily fortunate situation where my parents have built up a good amount of wealth, and have decided to gift us an annual amount of stock (all in one company) worth around $60k. We're crazy grateful for it, and figuring out what to do with it is a great problem to have.
Our financial context:
- Income: $150k/year (Only I work right now, supporting my wife and new baby. My wife will go back to work within a year or so.)
- Retirement: $150k (From previous jobs. We're not currently putting towards a 401k, we don't have the income bandwidth.)
- Investments: $130k (all gifted stock)
- Savings: $40k (money market fund)
- Student debt: $40k
I'm happy with my salary, although it's not quite enough to cover all our expenses in our area. We're fine, we have some good runway before we hit our savings, but we're not currently setting aside anything from my paychecks for building savings.
The dilemma: we're unsure how best to plan with this $60k/year gift. Do we treat it like a long-term investment, since it's stock? Do we treat it as income, since it's a gift? I'm sure we want to do something in the middle - putting it all towards retirement would be overkill, but putting it all towards short-term goals would be short-sighted. My current plan is to set aside some percentage, say 20-30%, for retirement (maybe even reinvesting it into a retirement account), and putting the rest towards some of our mid-term goals (either keeping it in stock or putting into money market)? We want to buy a house in the next couple years, a car in the next 4-5, we want to save for our kid's college, etc. Any ideas would be appreciated!