Being on the receiving end of a financial windfall should be a blessing. However,, for many inheritors, it can also be a burden. The unfortunate reality is that American families don’t have a great track record of preserving financial legacies for the good of their families and future generations.
To put it simply, many families don’t know what to do with a $500K inheritance. A 2023 survey conducted by insurance company New York Life found that the majority of people aren’t prepared to manage this influx of funds. Just 42% of those polled said they are comfortable handling an inheritance.
For many, a family inheritance can be life-changing. It’s – a real opportunity to change their financial trajectory and take their lifestyle to the next level. In many cases, it is also the hope of their parents that their bequest becomes a lasting legacy that could benefit future generations.
To a great extent, the heirs of a large inheritance are stewards of a legacy. That legacy should ideally be honored, grown, and preserved for the benefit of the next generation.
If you are (or will be) the beneficiary of an inheritance, it’s essential to think about the long-term impact of your decisions. If you inherited $500K, for example, would you know what do with it?
Below, we map out the steps a family could take to make prudent decisions with a $500,000 or larger inheritance.
Define Its Purpose
The first question that comes to many inheritors’ minds is, “how should I invest a $500,000 inheritance?”
That is a critical question to ask, and we’ll address it later on. But first, it’s essential to think through what you hope to accomplish in the big picture with your inheritance.
How can this money, which is the result of your parents’ or relatives’ generosity, help you achieve your life ambitions? What would your parents want to see happen for you and your family?
It’s critical to have a purpose for the money. Without a purpose, it’s easy to get lost in the pursuit of more, which doesn’t necessarily lead to lasting fulfillment. How can the money be used or invested to create the most economic value for your family and the next generation?
Having a purpose and a vision and sharing it with your family is one way to build a foundation for informed and targeted decisions.
Don’t Make Rash Decisions
The time you take to think about the legacy’s purpose will help you avoid making any quick or rash decisions about what to do with your inheritance. As you plan how to invest or otherwise use a $500K inheritance, make sure you’re considering all your options.
There may be some exceptions to investing all the funds. Paying off high-interest debt can potentially be a good decision for a portion of the inheritance, for example.
You may also want to spend part of your $500K inheritance on something fun, or otherwise enjoyable. In the right context and with proper planning, that’s not necessarily a bad idea. A vacation, car, or other experience or asset can fit into your larger plan.
However, you need to keep long-term financial goals and objectives in mind. Every dollar spent from your inheritance is one less dollar that can be invested or otherwise used to generate a return.
A vacation costing a few thousand dollars, as a one-off treat for yourself or your family, won’t totally ruin the potential investing power of a large inheritance. However, a larger luxury spending spree easily could — especially without a clear, big-picture strategy for the inheritance as a whole.
It’s essential to take the time to plan. Consider how luxury spending will reduce the potential to put your inheritance to work for you. Take the cost of carrying high-interest debt versus the returns of investing the money that would be used to pay it down into account.
It’s OK to leave the money in a savings account while you’re doing research or conferring with your fiduciary financial advisor. But your bank account isn’t the best place to keep all that money long-term as it will need to keep growing to keep up with inflation.
Create an Emergency Fund
After taking a deep breath once you’ve received the inheritance, you should create an emergency fund if you don’t already have one. An emergency fund is essential to cover any unexpected expenses arising from an emergency.
That includes a job loss or period of disability, a medical emergency, a major car or home repair, and anything else that might require a significant and immediate amount of cash.
A general rule of thumb is to set aside anywhere from three to twelve months of living expenses depending on your situation. Your emergency fund should be invested in a liquid savings vehicle, such as a savings or money market account. Your advisor can help you determine what is the right amount for you.
Assemble Your Financial Team
If you think having more money will make your life easier, think again. A sudden windfall can make life much more complicated. Suddenly there are tax, estate, investment, and financial planning issues to address.
These areas require a high level of competence to understand and manage. It’s vitally important to find experienced advisors who will put your best interests first.
A CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional is best positioned to work with you holistically to address all your planning needs. Financial advisors who have earned the CFP® certification have expertise in multiple financial disciplines. They are used to working collaboratively with a team of advisors that might also include a tax professional and attorney.
Before turning your money over to any investment advisor, make sure they are a fiduciary someone required by law to put your best interests first. Most importantly, a good advisor who understands you and what you want to accomplish will help you avoid emotionally driven mistakes that could cost you a good portion of your inheritance.
Advisors who are CFP® professionals are required to hold themselves to the fiduciary standard, which will help you determine what to do with a $500k windfall with confidence.
How to Invest a $500,000 Inheritance
For an inheritance of $500,000 or larger, there are no off-the-shelf solutions that could address an individual investor’s unique needs, objectives, and investment profile.
For example, do you want to invest in real estate? Or, are you wondering if you can retire off of a $500K inheritance through the dividends and interest that investing and saving could produce? These decisions can shape your investing options.
Before investing any money, it would be essential to have a personalized investment plan that considers your specific investment objectives, tolerance for risk, and investment time frame. Investors with a carefully considered, long-term investment plan can put themselves in a greater position to be successful than those without a plan.
Here are the key elements of a sound, long-term investment plan:
Set well-defined goals and investment objectives
Having a purpose for your $500K inheritance, and for your assets in general, is important because it gives you the conviction to focus on doing the right things with your money. However, you still need clearly defined goals and investment objectives to guide your investment decisions. Setting goals is about translating your life ambitions into quantifiable and achievable financial targets.
Develop an asset allocation strategy
Studies from Vanguard show that as much as 88 percent of a portfolio’s return is not determined by individual investments, but rather by the mix of assets inside the portfolio. So, the mix or allocation of assets is far more important than the specific selection of investments.
The key is determining which asset mix would produce the kind of returns you need to achieve your objectives within the constraints of your risk tolerance. Asset allocation is not concerned with choosing individual securities. Instead, it’s about selecting the right mix of assets with a weighting that conforms to your investment objectives and risk profile.
Consider retirement planning and investing as an example. A younger person with a longer time horizon might have a higher risk tolerance than someone closer to retirement.
The younger person might allocate more money to riskier assets that can generate higher returns. The older person might reduce his allocation to riskier assets to preserve capital for retirement. Your asset allocation may change over time as you get closer to retirement.
Practice diversification
When investing, it’s virtually impossible to know at any given time when one asset class or asset subset will outperform another type of asset. The solution is to diversify your portfolio among various types of assets to capture returns whenever and wherever they occur.
Diversification reduces your risk exposure to any single asset that might drastically underperform. You can think of diversification as a method to control risk and volatility in your portfolio.
The key is to choose assets with a low correlation with each other. For instance, when stocks are performing well, bonds tend to perform poorly – and vice versa. Within a stock portfolio, blue-chip stocks can provide stability and dividend income, while small-cap stocks can offer high-growth potential. Each of these assets can contribute positively to an investment portfolio.
Select your investments
If you are new to investing, your challenge is choosing from a vast universe of possible investments. Between individual securities, mutual funds, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), you have thousands and thousands of investment choices. MarketWatch says.
With a $500,000 inheritance to invest, a good strategy for developing the right asset allocation while achieving optimal diversification is the use of index funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
For many people new to investing, index funds and ETFs are popular because they can offer instant diversification and professional management. You can choose among different asset classes to create an asset allocation that conforms to your risk-return profile.
These funds invest in different stock indexes, such as the S&P 500 or the Russell 2000 index, as well as different market segments, such as real estate, discretionary stocks, and energy stocks. Most have low management fees, which is essential to ensure you keep most of your money working for you.
How to Invest Inheritance Money to Save on Taxes
Most Americans don’t need to worry about a direct inheritance tax on $500K, or any amount. Only a few states have a tax paid by the beneficiary of an inheritance, as AARP explains.
However, you will pay taxes at some point depending on what you inherit and your investment activities. The key to maximizing wealth over time is to minimize the taxes you pay on your investments. For example, if you inherit a traditional IRA, there are rules on when you must withdraw funds from that account. When money is withdrawn from an IRA it is taxable at your marginal income tax rate so it’s important to think strategically about those withdrawals, so you are not hit with a large tax bill down the road that could be avoided.
In a non-retirement account, generally you only pay taxes on dividends, interest or when they are sold for a gain.
If you hold your investments longer than a year, you’ll pay a more favorable capital gains tax than if you sold them within a year of buying them. If you hold your investments until you die, your heirs will receive a stepped-up basis on the securities they inherit.
This virtually eliminates any tax you might have paid when you inherit the funds, assuming your estate is under the federal estate tax exclusion amount ($13.61 million for an individual in 2024).
Investors who minimize their trading activities can reduce taxes on their investments. Also, a good financial advisor will know how to harvest your portfolio for tax losses. If, during the year, any of your investments perform poorly, they can be sold for a loss.
That loss can then be used to offset any capital gains or deducted from your income (up to $3,000 each year). Those securities can then be repurchased after a period of time, hopefully at a better price.
Tax-smart Charitable Contributions
For many inheritors, a sudden windfall may bring out their philanthropic desires. If that is one of your goals and you are new to philanthropy, it’s important to understand how to donate to charities in the most tax-efficient way.
If you are over 70.5 years old, contributing to charity through a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) is an incredible strategy to consider. You might also potentially consider contributing to a donor-advised fund as well. This is a smart, flexible, and more cost-effective way to give more thoughtfully and strategically.
You can establish a donor-advised fund for as little as $5,000 with the help of your financial advisor. The fund becomes a repository for all your charitable contributions until you decide when and to whom you want to make a gift.
Or, you can leave your contributions to accumulate in an investment account. You are eligible for a tax deduction in the year you make the contribution, even if gifts aren’t made. Your fund custodian will do all your tax reporting. If you gift appreciated assets, which is a smart approach, your beneficiaries will realize no capital gains.
Keeping the Legacy Going
When asking oneself what to do with a $500K inheritance, a common answer is to support children, grandchildren, and other family members in the next generations.
If you intend to pass the legacy on to your children or other family, you will need to develop an estate plan that minimizes estate taxes while facilitating the transfer of assets. If your wealth grows to more than the estate tax exemption, your estate could owe taxes at a rate of 40% on the excess.
If your total estate is smaller than the exemption, it would likely owe little to no taxes. However, if you live in one of the 17 states that levy an estate tax or an inheritance tax on beneficiaries, the exemptions can be much lower or nonexistent.
Working with an estate attorney, you will need to consider the most effective methods for transferring your assets with consideration for taxes and any particular circumstances. You may need a trust arrangement to maximize your estate for your spouse and other arrangements for distributing assets to minor children.
At the very least, you will need a living trust with a designated executor, a pour-over will, a power of attorney, and a medical directive to ensure your assets are distributed as intended.
Don’t Go it Alone
As you plan how to invest a $500k inheritance, consider how valuable professional guidance can be. $500,000 is a big inheritance. It could have a significant impact on your financial situation, depending on how it is managed and utilized.
As you can see here, there are many complex, moving parts involving several financial disciplines. This is a critical time to work closely with a trusted advisor who can quarterback your financial team to ensure your inheritance remains a blessing and doesn’t become a burden.
