Then take as much money as needed to cover my running costs and have a comfortable extra to spend by investing the money safely.
"Invest safely"? I've never heard of such a thing. I've always believed investments to be a bigger gamble than the lottery.
But, I'm interested in learning. Please explain. Exactly where can I invest money (on a fixed income) and NOT lose it? I really want to know.
Seriously?
There are any number of capital-protected income-generating products on the market, protected by a number of guarantees. Returns on these products are generally lower than when capital is at risk, but that's the trade-off you have.
Of course, nothing is 100% safe (companies can go bust, so can governments, there may be a global thermonuclear war tomorrow, but keeping it under the mattress isn't 100% safe either). For practical purposes, there are a large number of capital-protected, income-generating investments out there. There are also large number of investments that offer a lesser (but still large) degree of capital protection but the prospect of somewhat higher returns in exchange for the risk. And at the far end of the spectrum, there are lots of ways to risk your capital much more in exchange for a greater upside. Think of it as a spectrum; from what it sounds like, you want to focus on the extreme safe end of the spectrum, and limit your research to that.
I'm not going to give specific financial advice beyond that, but in a general sense, I'd certainly advise you to research.
Back on the thread's topic, $100M is far more than you'd want to invest safely in the above way. You'd want a diversified portfolio with some degree of protection, but you'd also have enough to permit some far more aggressive investments. So as for what I'd personally do with $100M, it's enough to indulge lots of immediate luxuries (the usual houses, cars, clothes, etc, probably about $10-15M total on all those things), and then to set up a permanently comfortable income-stream/lifestyle with the bulk of remainder. Sadly, it's not quite enough to really party in a big way (private jets, owning tropical islands, secret underground lairs, armies of fembots, etc, etc). You need to be a billionaire to really go to town these days. So I think after arranging the basics of a permanently comfortable life with about $80M, I'd use $20M to finance start-up/venture-capital projects. Not only would it be fun trying to figure out which concepts have potential, it would also hold out potential for really growing the total pot to something with global impact.
