Here’s the scenario.

You win £1m in the lottery/casino:church fete etc.

You don’t have family commitments.

You don’t want to work.

You’re 30-40.

How do you make your money last for your life?

Assuming we’re talking living till 70-80, and enjoying life to a certain standard. Not just renting a one bedroom flat with no heating for the next 40-50 years.

I was thinking property. Buy 3x properties for £200k and then live off the rents. Using the rest to buy your own place and other niceties. Maybe put £50k in a mutual fund like Vanguard.

6am can’t sleep post confirmed.

Buy a house put the rest in shares job jobbed 20k income next to no tax or expenses is plenty for a comfortable life though even better with 2m between two!

Buy a house somewhere nice but sensible for 250k, pay yourself a 40k salary and pay what you can into a pension tax free and invest. Or air bnb properties buy one and use the income to fund the next one.

Stick it under the mattress* to use as pocket money.
Sign on.
Enjoy life on the dole.

*is this why you can’t sleep?

Problem with the OP’s approach, he is effectively buying a business (house rentals) and has to keep running it.

You win £1m in the lottery/casino:church fete etc.
You’re 30-40.

spending £20,000 per annum will get you to 80-90 (not including any monies accrued on the lump sum.)

£20k in 2070 will be worth next to nothing.

You could invest in my startup. I’m writing an app to generate unhelpful yet slightly amusing answers to forum posts, using deep learning and AI.

You d be bored doing nothing after 2 years, i know 2 lottery winne and 1 has gone back to his old life…despite winning way over 10mn.
Use your taxbreaks…11k income, 2k divs, 11k cgt..24k and you dont pay a penny in tax.

Nice mix of property btl, holiday rental, shares, 1mn should net you 50k pa so you can employ someone.

My neighbour won the lottery, bought 10 supercars, now all sold and hes just kept the old 911 he had pre win.

A £50k income should be pretty easy and that’s enough for nice life for me. £100k is realistically achievable with some effort. I wouldn’t mind if the investments took a bit of work, gives you something to do. Property needn’t be that much work if you buy well or get lucky. I have a house to live in I’m happy with so I reckon £700k into btl property, £200k into the stocks market, £100k for me to play with and hope to make £40-£50k

You don’t want to work.

You’re 30-40.

What are you actually going to be doing all da every day for 50 years if not working at all ?

I believe the act of working (interaction, thinking, completing tasks etc,) is actually a positive. Not for 40 hours a week it isn’t but to some extent.

£20k in 2070 will be worth next to nothing.

should be enough to keep you in werthers thought 😉

I’d buy a vineyard in SW France not far from Lacanau, live in the shed, work the land, drink the profit, surf the beaches.

Hic *

What are you actually going to be doing all da every day for 50 years if not working at all ?

Year one, training and lots of riding
Year two, EWS and some other events on a world tour living out of a van while away on the road.
Repeat an swap to more fun things as I get older
Basically a series of long holidays with cheap living back in the UK/Tasmania in between.

Year one, training and lots of riding
Year two, EWS and some other events on a world tour living out of a van while away on the road.
Repeat an swap to more fun things as I get older
Basically a series of long holidays with cheap living back in the UK/Tasmania in between.

Sounds great if you can do all that for 50 years on a million pounds.

What are you actually going to be doing all da every day for 50 years if not working at all ?

What I want, when I want.

I believe the act of working (interaction, thinking, completing tasks etc,) is actually a positive. Not for 40 hours a week it isn’t but to some extent.

You can do all those things without working.

Paid off house and low living costs in the UK, sensible investments aiming to return about 40k per year
1million – 250k for housing would leave 19 years of 40k income (no income tax to pay on that I assume and no mortgage) from just spending the capital. Add in interest and investment returns from low risk stocks over time and it should provide a decent return.
removing housing costs and the general expense of going to work then I reckon I could do a well planned world tour for 10 years. At that point think of a retirement option that allowed for an active life.
Then scale back as my body complains! Should see me to a normal retirement age and then make some more plans.

I probably wouldn’t stop work with a million. It isn’t enough for me. Neither does OP, setting up a business:

You don’t want to work.

Buy 3x properties for £200k and then live off the rents.

BTL as a single investment isn’t a great idea (eggs, baskets, etc).

If I had to quit work, some capital spends the invest tax efficiently. With risk you can drawdown 3.5-4% per year, indexed without affecting the capital so that’s a fair income for not working.

What I’d actually do is buy a more expensive house, couple of other things and then invest the rest. Then go back to work, able to retire significantly earlier than planned.

Surf bum in the cheaper parts of the world.

Million pounds would last a lot longer outside of UK/Europe.

Invest it in a sure-fire moneymaking scheme – open a bike shop 😀

Okay, you’d probably lose it all, but have fun doing it.

You d be bored doing nothing after 2 years

I only said that to remove earnings from a job as a variable. One probably would do something like working doing something you like, but you could just as easy volunteer 5 days a week. I am not suggesting just sitting in a pile of quids like Scrooge McDuck.

I think mikewsmith has the best idea – take a few years off work doing what you want to do while you have the physical ability to still do it.

You d be bored doing nothing after 2 years,

Of course you would if you did nothing but there’s lots of volunteer work out there, bank work too where you can turn in for work if you feel like it or even get a zero hour contract so you’re nit even classed as unemployed. Of course you could just also leave a nice relaxing life filling the days in with hobbies, family or just enjoying life rather than work.

I’d buy a small house or possibly a barge. Fill my days riding, reading, walking the couple of dogs I’d get from a rescue centre,working out, maybe learn some languages, do an OU course and volunteer a bit or work part time as and when I fancied it. I genuinely feel sorry for anyone who would get bored not working. I get bored at work.

Edit – completely disregarded the OP there. I’d just live frugally. £150k on a small house, no car and maybe work a couple of days a week. I earn £30k now, have two kids and Mrs F stays at home with said kids. I could easily live comfortably off one million if it was just me.

I genuinely feel sorry for anyone who would get bored not working. I get bored at work.

Yeah having taken and enforced drop from full time over the last 6 years it’s been easy to fill, I’ve rediscovered photography, ridden different stuff, been to new places and learnt new things. If I could fund the fun side of it the work would go, I’d keep my coworking office and use the space for the fun side of things.

How do you make your money last for your life?

you could buy/pay off your mortgage, lets say that uses £200K and invest the rest in funds, you might get £25-£35K a year if you’ve chosen wisely. try to live off as little as possible and re-invest as much as you can, get that compounding going. get a part time job for paying your basic needs and to stop yourself from going bonkers.

it’s not the life of endless luxury, but you’d be pretty comfy.

A modest home in UK, perhaps a modest home somewhere abroad to escape to somewhere warmer during the UK winter, rest gathering interest.

Buying a few properties in UK to rent out would probably be the right answer, but then that would be hypocritical, as currently all the homes owned by landlords are partly responsible for driving up UK house prices for potential first time buyers like myself.

I often play this game….

I like where I live – good area of the country, near family and friends…

Ergo, I wouldn’t have much change from a mil jsut buying a nice house….
So, not truly answering the question…

I’d pay off my mortgage, I’d carry on working but maybe drop a few hours, and then buy a chalet in morzine/Chatel to rent out to friends and possibly strangers.

Having the mortgage paid off mid 30s would be nice… I don’t think I could live to ‘retirement’ on the change of 1 million without a really good investment, or to carry on working…
DrP

I genuinely feel sorry for anyone who would get bored not working.

Don’t. I really enjoy my job. Possibly because it’s a choice and not a necessity.

Buying a few properties in UK to rent out would probably be the right answer, but then that would be hypocritical, as currently all the homes owned by landlords are partly responsible for driving up UK house prices for potential first time buyers like myself.

You can buy commercial property. Makes it purely business. Alternatively you could be an ethical domestic landlord. Maybe take less rent and offer property to those more in need. Partly business party philanthropical

Don’t. I really enjoy my job. Possibly because it’s a choice and not a necessity.

In which case it’s the sort of thing that you would do if you got a win. It’s very different for a lot of people

The obvious politics aside… I’d buy an apartmenthaus in Austria. Live in one of the apartments, rent the other 3/4 apartments out for ski and summer seasons and live off the income of those and the income from renting my house out in England. Would be able to ski and/or bike every day. Probably sell up in my 70s and live off £1m plus that I’ve sold the property for.

If things got sticky and I needed some income I could come home and do some supply teaching inter season.

In which case it’s the sort of thing that you would do if you got a win. It’s very different for a lot of people

That’s my point. See the post to which I was responding.

Tour the world with my totally rubbish band.
I’d also pay to have someone killed. Always wanted to do that.
And get a bidet. Always been my personal definition of “making it”

The thought of being able to buy a house for £250k.

This is what that money gets you round this way:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-69823979.html

Yeah byt why would anyone live in hampshire

I genuinely feel sorry for anyone who would get bored not working.

Exactly, must be very boring sad individuals.

With £1m invested I’d live off the income from the returns plus withdrawing what I needed to, £40k a year would be plenty, leave what ever was left to charity in my will. I’d keep the modest home I have now to return to on occasion. I would do a lot of travelling around NZ & Austriala, USA & Canada and Europe in a camper van going hiking and biking most of the year.

In which case it’s the sort of thing that you would do if you got a win. It’s very different for a lot of people
That’s my point. See the post to which I was responding

Lucky for you then. You could carry on with what you’re doing. I don’t feel sorry for you, it’s the other let’s say 50% of us that work purely out of necessity 😉

I’d assume I’d not make it to 70 and blow the lot. That would probably result in me not making it to 70, job’s a good’un

This blog is your friend: Retirement Investing Today – written by a guy who has worked and invested over 10 years or so to get to a point where he can retire and live off the dividends and interest.

If I remember rightly his aim was to reach just over £1m in investments, then retire to a property in Europe with an annual income of £15k-£20k. Well worth a read on a lazy Sunday morning!