I Received a Windfall I Didn’t Want or Need: Here’s What I Did With It
Unexpected money might sound like a problem we all wish to have. However, money can come into your life in ways you didn’t anticipate and might not even want.
While most people can find uses for money they weren’t counting on, have you ever thought about what you’d do with it if you suddenly found yourself rolling in extra dough?
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Two people who found themselves in that exact situation explain what that looked like when it happened to them and how they spent that money: Melissa Geissinger, a California author, and Marie, an animal lover from Oregon.
A Wildfire Settlement
In 2017, Geissinger, a California resident, faced one of the worst days of her life when the terrifying Tubbs Fire raced through Santa Rosa and burned down 5,600 homes, hers among them. Pregnant at the time, as well, she and her husband found themselves forced to live with family as they welcomed a new baby, who was born with a heart condition, not long after.
Geissinger’s insurance paid out enough money for them to live until their home was rebuilt, though she described it as “survival mode.”
However, she eventually received several hundred thousand dollars as the result of a settlement from the utility PG&E, whose downed power lines contributed to this and other fires in 2017 and 2018. Since it was money she hadn’t counted on, she had some freedom to be creative with it.
While the stress of that time was not something she’d repeat, she found ways to use the settlement money to help her build a stronger financial future.
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A Real Estate Investment
With a bit of experience as a licensed mortgage originator, Geissinger chose to invest some of the settlement money into real estate.
“I had done a lot of research and decided I was going to use the BRRR method, which is buy, rehab, rent out, refinance and repeat. So I, just as of March, have my first tenant, and I’m very excited about that.”
She bought a property outright for $65,000 in Akron, Ohio — a place where a friend lived, so she knew a bit about the area and where prices were low.
“I did some checks on the numbers to see if they would work out on the ROI, based on what I learned through reading some books, and it looked really good. I went through BiggerPockets.com to find people to work with, and I ended up finding my real estate agent, as well as my property manager, through that site.”
She spent about $18,000 to rehab it and then rented it out. The property currently brings in a bit more than $1,000 per month in rental income, and she plans to eventually refinance and use the equity to purchase a second property.
Launching a Novel
Another investment Geissinger made with her settlement money was to produce and launch her novel, “Nothing Left But Dust,” which she published in April 2023. Between paying for editing, proofreading, a cartographer to create a special map for the book and the audiobook, she spent about $8,000.
While she would certainly not like to relive the terrible circumstances that led to the settlement money, it helped her out financially in ways she isn’t sure she would have been able to afford otherwise, particularly related to the costs of her son’s healthcare needs.
“If not for that, we probably would’ve had to sell the house and move in with my parents,” she said.
An Unexpected Inheritance
When Marie from Oregon learned that a late uncle had left her $20,000 in his will around ten years ago, she was flabbergasted. “It was a complete surprise. It was not money that I needed, and so I just thought, well, I will just hang onto this. But then I ended up doing this slightly oddball thing with part of it,” she explained.
Rescuing a Cat in Need
The “oddball thing” involved something that happened while she was scrolling through cat rescue sites.
“I came across a site that was offering up for adoption this little one-year-old cat who needed a pretty invasive surgery. She’d been produced by an irresponsible breeder who couldn’t afford to do the surgery that was going to save her life,” Marie explained.
While Marie had no plans to adopt the kitty, who lived in the neighboring state of Washington, anyway, something propelled her to offer up money for her care.
“I thought, I’ve had this unexpected windfall of money. There’s this totally innocent little creature that’s going to die unless somebody helps it. I don’t know if I want to adopt the cat, but I think I’m going to do something crazy with this money that just fell out of nowhere and [save] this cat’s life,” she said.
Marie said she drew up a contract with the breeder and the vet saying that she would be responsible for the cost of the surgery, and that if the kitty survived it, which didn’t seem likely, she would have first right of refusal to adopt her.
The kitty not only survived, but once she was sufficiently recovered — about four months after surgery — she won Marie’s heart and came to live with her, which she still does today.
Marie has no regrets about spending the money on that surgery, calling it “a great decision.” This kitty is not the only one Marie has invested her own money into helping, either. When asked why she is so intent on helping animals, she said, “I have a deeper feeling for animals sometimes than I think I even do for people. I think it’s just how I’m wired.”
A Rotating Loan for Those in Need
Despite her claim of feeling more for animals than people, Marie has exhibited extreme generosity for her two legged friends, as well, with the remainder of her inheritance money. She created an emergency loan fund for people that she knows who might find themselves in need.
She has found herself in situations where friends, and even acquaintances, needed an emergency loan, but to take it out from a bank would have come with high interest they couldn’t afford to pay back.
“So I’ve kept this money as sort of a circulating loan thing where I tell people, if you never pay me back, it’s fine. If you do pay me back, I’ll be able to pay it forward again, at some point. So that’s the other thing I’ve done with it.”
The money remains largely unspent unless it’s on loan, kept in an account she can access easily, so it can be “completely fluid.”
While people rarely sneer at unexpected cash windfalls, the ways to use extra money can run the gamut from helping set up a stronger financial future, to helping out the less fortunate.
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: I Received a Windfall I Didn’t Want or Need: Here’s What I Did With It
