Similarly, Asleep At The Wheel's
Gone but not Forgotten, in the verse about having gone up to Prudoe Bay to make lots of money working the oil field there:
quote:
Half I spent on women,
The other half on whiskey,
The other half, well, I just threw away.
Growing up, my father would tell me about one of his uncles who had made several fortunes in his time and whose advice it was that making the fortune is the easy part, but keeping it was what he could never figure out.
And to put a million dollars into perspective, if your current annual salary is between $50,000 and $100,000, then a million dollars only represents 20 to 10 years income, respectively. If you have fewer than that many years left before you retire, then that is different than if you are much earlier in your career.
Now certainly, being able to pay your house off is a good idea. If you stick to the scheduled mortgage payments, you end up paying 4 or 5 times the principle in interest alone.
If you're comfortable with your current lifestyle, why change it? If not, then just ramp it up a bit to where it becomes comfortable. Becoming extravagant will sap your fortune away. Sure, set aside a little mad money in your budget, but stick to that budget.
The same with investments. The old wisdom was to invest your fortune and live off the interest, but that's gotten a lot trickier now. Though again, budget a small portion for risky speculation, just as you would wisely plan a gambling trip to Vegas -- set aside a fixed amount that you will gamble with and stop when that's gone.
It takes a lot of good planning to survive a windfall.
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