What to do with won money?

I didn’t win anything but I did recently enter an online sweepstakes and it got me dreaming about what I would do if I won the $350k cash prize. Just for giggles, let’s assume I won and now have $350,000 in cash. And since we’re dreaming let’s say that’s after taxes…

The #1 first thing I would do with my cash is get a mani/ pedi. Kidding, sort of. It is the one thing from my easy spending life that I really do miss. The real first thing I would do is, duh, pay off all debts! Secondly, I would set aside 6 months living expenses in an emergency fund, finding the highest yield savings account available or perhaps a CD ladder. $100 K would go straight into college savings for the boys and another $100 k would go into retirement accounts for S and me.

I’d also want to set aside a 20% down payment on a house so there’s another 40k (a 200k house in this area would be more than enough for us to grow in). The remainder I would invest, something about peer to peer lending appeals to me, perhaps because we got our consolidation loans through peer to peer to help us out of our debt mess.

$77,117.00 Debt

$24,000.00 Emergency Savings

$100,000.00 College Fund

$100,000.00 Retirement

$40,000.00 House

$8,883.00 Invest

$350,000.00 Total

But wait, all the money is going to debt or to some sort of savings?  Where’s the party, where’s the new car and big screen, what about the mani/ pedi? Yep, I feel pretty comfortable saying that I would put everything into savings after the debt is gone. After a decade of owing money all over the place and having gone through several major life events that would have been a lot less traumatic had there been savings to fall back on, I absolutely would put it all towards financial stability. Besides, paying off the debt would free up at least $800 a month to put towards having a bit more spending cash each month for the luxuries in life.

Now if only I could just win that cash… until then I just have to keep doing this the old-fashioned way and keep chipping away at the debt.