Agreed, it's super easy to pick up a material hobby (like collecting something). Instead, I'd pick up a working hobby. Let's say you really enjoy volunteer work. I'm sure there's a ton of good not-for-profits that need an experienced project manager.

Money can't buy happiness. Money can free up your time to explore enriching endeavours. A windfall should be a gateway to really explore what the world has to offer without limitations.

My top things that I would do in this situation:

- Make sure my debts are paid, and ensure long term stable income

- 1 hour minimum workout every day

- Be outside as much as possible

- Learn new applicable skills (home or auto repair, woodworking, music, etc...)

- Possibly go back to school

- Play video games

- Read more

These are all things that I try to do now, but don't have the time because of work or debt.

- Make sure my debts are paid, and ensure long term stable income

Totally. No need to carry a car loan, mortgage, Credit card debt anything anymore.

Depending on the mortgage rate, it might be better to keep it and invest the money that would have been used to pay off the mortgage instead.

Nah, once you've got 8MM in the bank there's no point worrying about maximizing returns. You've already won. Keep it simple, pay off the house, enjoy life.

This is exactly right. Mortgage/debt represents risk. Many people do the math on potential returns, but calculate risk as $0, which it definitely is not. I think it helps to consider this transaction in reverse. If you had a paid for house would you mortgage it so you could put that money into an investment account at Schwab? Almost certainly not.

If you pay off your house, shouldnt you also set aside ~10 years of annual property tax + X%/year for upgrades/fix/whatever - such that you literally do not have to think of a house expense for a decade.

Add in a lump sum for the monthly utilities for a decade and make a house account. Have the house account pay all these other incidentals from that account which you otherwise ignore.

Then, anytime you look at your bank account, the future costs of living in that home are never reflected in the balance you see in your daily account(s)

some would say that depends on the cost of borrowing. i know high net wealths that borrow any time they can if the rates are low enough.

And this is how monetary policy works :)