In-laws Are Giving Us $100,000 (With Strings Attached)

In today's digital world, you need ID theft protection that actually works. Protect yourself at Zander.com. My in-laws have graciously gifted my wife and I $100,000. Wow. With the wishes that we, yes, very, very, very kind of them. What are the strings? The wish. Yeah, there we go. The wishes are that we install about $80,000 to $90,000 of solar panels on our roof to offset our utilities costs. So they're buying you solar. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. What do they want after that? That's it. And in the note that they shared with us was, obviously we don't have to uphold their wishes, but that's why the money was given to us. And so they said, you do what you do with it. We would love to see you guys install solar. What is the obsession with you getting solar? Do they think it's all coming down? Ah. Maybe. Possibly they have solar. Um, you know, I think they, without getting political, they, they are, they want, they believe in renewable energy and so anyway. Okay. That's what I was going to say. If this is their like, Hey, we'd love for you guys to sort of like live by these principles that we live by. Or not even that. Like if my, if my in-laws gave me, said, Hey, want to buy y'all solar panels? I'd take that. Yeah. But my in-laws are awesome too. And they wouldn't then come back next week and be like, well, you know, since we gave you this. What would you guys do with the money? Well, that's, that's where the, you know, I, I've been following y'all for a while and I would love to put it towards all towards our mortgage. How much is left in the mortgage? 700,000. Oof. That's a big mortgage. Yeah. You guys must have a fantastic income though. Yeah. We make about 450. Heck yeah, man. And so it's, it's, we're, we're obviously in a, we're. We're very lucky, and so I just want to do the right thing at the same time. I don't want to throw $100,000 away, and so I'm looking for advice. You know them better than we do. Yeah, I'm more concerned about the not that they – because take it for what it is. They didn't give you $100,000. They offered to buy you solar panels for your big fancy house. That's what they offered to do. I think the question before you is what relational strings are going to come attached to this. That's my bigger concern. There are certain people in my family that I would not take a dime from because it would cost me my soul on the back end. And there's people in my family I'd take a ton of money from because they're awesome and generous and great. You know what I mean? So what relational cost will this incur? Yeah, they're amazing. I think if we had a hard conversation with them, they would listen. It's just, you know, there's so many other things we could put towards our 529s. We could, you know, solar panels would be 10th on the list, 12th on the list, you know. Yeah, but you'll make half a million dollars a year. It's not like you're having to make big, hard choices about how you're going to eat, right? No, we don't. Would this change the answer if we have to refinance in six years because we did a 15-year arm? Oh, geez. It's easy for a thief to steal your identity, but it's much harder for you to fix the problem. With stacks of paperwork, hours stuck on hold, and the stress of convincing people you are who you say you are. Now, luckily, when my identity got stolen, I had ID theft protection from Zander. If your identity gets stolen, a dedicated specialist from Zander does all the work of restoring your identity for you. Plus, Zander offers up to $2 million in stolen funds and expense reimbursement. So take it from me. ID theft protection is something you want to have before you need it. To protect yourself, go to Zander.com or click the link in the description. I don't know that it would matter all that much. I mean, with the money you guys are making, and are you throwing extra at the mortgage right now? Yeah, we are. About $1,500 extra a month. Nice. So, you know, yeah. Yeah, I mean, in the baby steps, if you're like, hey, I could attack baby step six or I could get solar. I would go mortgage, but again, is Thanksgiving going to be awkward when they went, hey, so what did you guys do with the money? We knocked, put a dent in our mortgage. Yeah, now we only owe $600,000 instead of $700,000. Right. How are you only putting $1,500 a month extra towards your mortgage when you make $450,000 a year? Thank We're also putting into other investments. Outside of retirement? Outside of retirement, yes. So like 529s, a taxable brokerage account, all that stuff. What else are you investing in? It's the 529s. you. We have a brokerage account that we monthly deposit into, and then they allocate for us. Who's they? 401K, Edward Jones. Oh, okay. How much is in that brokerage account? $400. Whoa. Is that like a retire early fund? What's that about? Uh, yes, I think so. Um, some of it we've been reserved on continuing investing in the 529s in part because maybe kids don't want to go to school. Who knows where we're going to be in 10 years. And so we can use some of those funds to pay for sort of a flexible account that can cover any gaps and potentially help you guys, you know, create a bridge account if you wanted to retire early. Tell me if I'm nuts, George, Paul, if I'm in your exact seat right this second, I would Withdraw 100% of that brokerage account. Well, I wouldn't refinance my house actually because the rates are so ridiculous right now. But I would take all that money as soon as I could, put it towards my house and get my mortgage, the balance so obnoxiously low. And I would take my in-laws gift and get on with my life. You're overcomplicating your world. You make a half a million dollars. Yeah. Okay. You know what I'm saying? Like y'all make too much money to be this stressed. She said you sound like his wife. Life. But here's why I asked you what you're investing in. You, you, and dude, I am, I am so like, like I'm, I'm a jerk for how I'm judging you right now. You sound like a guy with schemes. And I was waiting for you to say, oh, I've got money in crypto and I've got a closet full of Beanie Babies also. Like, you sound like a guy who's like, no, listen, no, listen, listen, like that guy. No, I'm very, like I said before, I follow you guys, I'm very by the book. Okay, so I was wrong in my judgment and I will apologize in front of America. I was wrong there. Okay. So if we're doing it by the book, you guys are investing 15% of your household income and we're funding the retirement accounts first. We've run out of options there. Then we can move to non-retirement. That's 67 grand a year, correct? Yeah. So beyond that, any extra money, let's put some in the kids' 529s, might be a couple hundred bucks a month. Then beyond that, let's put any extra toward the mortgage. And I would count that windfall of the hundred grand towards that. And maybe in the future, you guys get solar, but who knows how long you're going Because you're not getting all that money back out of the house when you move. Solar's not going to ROI like that. So that's the other factor. That's what you think, George. If the grid goes down, it's going to be so much more valuable. It takes a long time to ROI on solar. Yeah. Even when you pay cash. 10 or 11 years. And so... So you might just say, hey, we don't know how long we're going to be in this house. I don't know if I did a break-even analysis. I don't know if it's going to make sense. So right now, we're just focused on paying off the mortgage. Wait, hold on. I want to hear something you just said. What did you say, about 10 or 11 years, Paul? That's the break-even for the solar. Oh, solar. Okay, okay. You put 90 in. You got it back out through savings. And now every dollar after that. You're sort of making the money. You guys are reading the wrong Reddit thread. You don't understand what's actually going on out there. You didn't listen to the guy who was selling the solar. John, you need to listen to darker podcasts, man. So for that reason, Paul, I would just say, hey, I appreciate it. And you might just straight up tell them, hey, we're going to use this on the mortgage for these reasons. We love the idea of solar, but right now it just doesn't make sense for our family and our goals. I'm going to disagree with George on this. John's doing solar. I would take the gift for what it was intended unless, and here's the big unless, if you could sit down with your father-in-law and your mother-in-law and say, look, I've got this money in a brokerage account. With this $100,000, I can pay my mortgage off. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. And if I gave you $100,000 and if I gave my daughter and her husband $100,000 because I wanted them to get solar panels because I never wanted them to have electric bill again. If I did And they sat down and said, We're so grateful for this gift, but we could be completely 100% mortgage debt-free. Then I would be like, dude, I'm in on that. I'm in on that. And that's only if there's no relational strings to this deal. That's the part we just can't know until we do it. I kind of like the excitement of it, of them using it toward the mortgage and then just see how Thanksgiving goes. I just like having electricity when it all goes down. The best ID theft protection comes from Zander. Real monitoring, full restoration, no fluff. Learn more at Zander.com.