My next purchase would be an old house — Victorian fixer-upper, preferably. This probably wouldn’t be the best fiscal itself decision, but I love old houses, decorating and remodeling work.

Additionally, I’d try to use the house as a personal investment, providing a meeting place with clients and somewhere to host others to network and socialize. If all goes to plan on the remodeling front, too, I would hopefully be able to do some design consulting on the side! (Dream job, nothing to do with my degree in Finance, haha.)

First, I’d stop looking for another money job and work at writing. My current novel is a little over half done, and I’m enjoying being able to work on it every day without the mental fatigue that would come from a money job.

Second, I’d take a portion of it and pay off the remainder of our mortgage (in the low $100K range). Then I’d set up automatic transfers of our monthly mortgage amount into the same investments as the remainder of the million to rebuild it.

Once the million was rebuilt, I’d start looking at charitable organizations to give the bulk of our mortgage amount to each month.

Long and convoluted plan, but there it is.