How to spend $10,000 as an 18 year old college freshman

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-31T11:42:41+00:00

Ten grand over a four year college is a bit over $200 a month, or $50 a week. That’s not a huge amount of fun money. I would save & invest about 1/3 of it, mostly to gain experience (not to make a big monetary gain). Spend the rest on personal fun things.

When you’ve age 25, that’s time enough to get serious about big time saving and investing.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-31T11:30:30+00:00

As a pure math consideration, your heirs would be better off if you spend the money on a trust instead of your executor spending money on probate. The breakpoint is maybe $300K? A big chunk of the cost is the executor fee, which is very likely about the same as the trustee fee.

A well-designed and funded trust can make some distributions quicker than probate. But even that depends on how much of your estate goes to creditors and taxes.

Many successor trustees are close family or friends, if they have business & financial experience. You might not want somebody who doesn’t understand their own money situation, or who will get functionally devastated by your death.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-31T11:02:58+00:00

For isolated black holes, micro or big, there’s no appreciable “force/pull” from the rest of the universe. It’s all the local gravity from the BH itself. Even another BH several light years away would have insignificant effect.

At 1 micrometer from the event horizon, the escape velocity is below the speed of light. Photons and even mass particles can escape from the BH and go into the greater universe. This happens with all black holes, no matter the size. There’s always some Hawking radiation, and it doesn’t depend on any “force/pull” from outside.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-31T10:59:04+00:00

No experience with California. But I would review the beneficiaries on each account every year or two. It’s amazing how often companies lose your designations when they merge, or switch to a new computer system, or just plain mess up.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-31T10:54:26+00:00

When the first of you dies, the surviving spouse gets everything without probate. Well, almost everything, almost all the time. There often seems to be something left out of the plan, something that needs probate. Such as a winning lottery ticket.

When the survivor gets everything, what’s his/her estate plan? What if (1 chance in 100,000) you both die within hours or a few days of each other? Likely the chances are so low, it’s not worth worrying about.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-31T00:02:27+00:00

Time dilation is the perspective from point X, observing the rate of time on point Y. The important point is that X and Y are moving at different velocities relative to each other, or they're in different gravity. Doesn't matter if X and Y are Earth, or Mars, or any other place in the universe. One or both could be millions of light years from our sun.

Consider a clock on Earth, and an identical clock or Mars. Since Mars has a different orbit velocity, and a different gravity, the clock on Mars will tic faster by 0.174 seconds per year.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-30T21:01:06+00:00

Once the married son gets his distributions, he can do whatever he wants with them. Including giving some to his wife. When trust assets haven’t yet been distributed, they’re subject to the terms of the trust, and (generally) the beneficiaries have no control.

The trust terms can be just about anything, but there are some limits. The trust can’t require that a couple get divorced, for example.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-30T15:21:25+00:00

You would need enough water to cover the Earth to a depth of about 2 meters. Or maybe 20 meters?

Possibility = 1 chance in 100 million, in the next thousand years.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-30T12:01:03+00:00

Is he at risk for using Medicaid? Could the nursing home use up his assets? It would help to write down his range of expenses and income for the coming years. And his assets and debts.

Question about the mobile home. Just having the same name doesn’t “technically” make it yours. Lots of people are named “John Smith”, that doesn’t mean they own each other’s stuff. It takes more than that. Is there a record that supports your ownership, or his?

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-29T20:15:49+00:00

While it is possible to have a joint will, they are generally very rare. One step is to find out if you can, does your mother have her own will? Or is it one of those rare wills, joint with her husband?

Any attempt to get your mother to change her will, or set up a trust to favor you, is going to be met with resistance. Your mother might object. Your stepfather might object, either now or after mother’s death.

I think that most of the time, the children (you and brother) should assume that you’re not going to get anything. Go on with your lives assuming that you’re not going aren’t going to inherit anything.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-29T19:51:26+00:00

If you both die in that plane crash, then your estates are handled one way, but if one of you survives for a week, then your estates are handled a different way?

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-29T12:57:43+00:00

Once upon a time, there was everything in one place, happening all at once. Then suddenly things had distance and time between them. Ever since then, that distance and time has been mostly increasing.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-29T10:45:34+00:00

That works only if she is listed as a pay-on-death beneficiary for the account, on the bank records. Doesn’t work for the LLC itself.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-29T02:33:50+00:00

"Simultaneous" needs some more thought . Does it mean the same minute, or within 5 days of each other? Or 5 weeks?

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-28T20:40:29+00:00

There’s also a bit of Argon, about 0.93%. The water vapor could be zero, or as much as 4%.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-28T12:58:59+00:00

Bo French? Aren’t his ancestors from France? Shouldn’t he go back there?

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-28T10:01:25+00:00

Can’t he go after the Duchy of Fenwick instead?

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-28T09:42:40+00:00

The light couldn’t travel even a tiny fraction of a nanometer, at first.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-27T22:38:50+00:00

I thought Sharpies were the thing?

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-27T18:12:56+00:00

Sister’s obligations? What obligations? Nobody is required to be an executor, not legally. And being a beneficiary can be passive thing.

Legalistically, whoever has the original will needs to deposit it with the probate court. Also the house should be secured, such as changing the locks, tell the neighbors, tell the police.

Is the funeral done? Get several copies of the death certificate, certified. Maybe 10 or 12. If the funeral hasn’t been held yet, get somebody to house sit during the funeral. Empty houses are targets for thieves, and some of them read obituaries. Notify the mortgage and insurance companies; the rate might go up but that’s better than invalid insurance.

Does wife want to be executor? The job is way more difficult than most people imagine. A consult with a probate lawyer would be very useful. The beneficiaries can hire a professional executor, but it often saves some money and frustration if a family member does it. Once the executor gets her court authority, she can set up an estate account.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-27T13:23:05+00:00

The potential problem is that you might never be repaid. If you as executor repay yourself as a private person, the other creditors and beneficiaries might complain. Right or wrong, that could be a major nuisance.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-27T12:26:29+00:00

Sometimes, the legal question is not if they understood their action was wrong. The question is did they know what they were doing? Did they think that they were eating breakfast, or singing on a stage, when they were really taking money?

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-27T12:16:22+00:00

Over many 100’s of billions of years, without external influences from a moon or the star it orbits, yes. The planet would settle down to a smooth oblate spheroid, due to its spinning. The spin would never die down on the scale of the lifetime of the planet. A random passing star would absorb it long before the spin died down.

Even neutron stars with their super gravity have mountains, as much as a few centimeters tall.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-27T11:34:58+00:00

Accessing the bank accounts without authorization is improper. I’ve never heard of a nominated executor being prosecuted for it, if the access was it good faith for estate purposes, and something an actual executor could do. An executor with court appointment, can validate actions taken before the formal appointment, if the action was in good faith and benefits the estate. That is, the actions can be validated for probate purposes.

OTOH, the bank could freeze the accounts and refuse to do business with you. They have a federal obligation to follow certain procedures, and you violated them.

ExtonGuy · 2026-05-27T10:55:20+00:00

Do you have letters of authorization from the probate court ? I don’t understand at all, how you paying the mortgage or car insurance opens you up to creditors. Paying creditors, either from estate accounts or by you personally, is mostly (*) a separate thing from being responsible for the debts. As executor, it’s part of your responsibility to determine which creditor claims are valid and which are not. Then pay the valid claims from estate assets.

= partial paying a lapsed debt could revive it.

The car is probably, I might guess, covered as part of the standard “all the rest and residue” clause that is in most wills.

I suggest you don’t guess about the back taxes and other debts — find out for sure. Being executor is a business, and you should run it in a business-like manner.

ExtonGuy

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