300k settlement, how to best put it to work for FIRE? Some background, I am a single 29YO living with my 56YO widowed mother in NYC. Dad died young and we lived in poverty until recently. We live in a rent stabilized apartment, with total expenses about 40k a year. She makes 53k a year after tax and I recently got a job make 46k a year after tax. We have no debt but also no assets and no retirement cushion for mom. We have come to an agreement, she pays the household bills because she is bad at saving/unwilling and I take care of the saving part. We have 20k as a 6 month emergency fund. I will be receiving 300k from an accident settlement end of this year. This is, in a word, unreal for people like us. This is just enough to buy some small starter home in the suburbs which I would desperately want to do, however I realize I could just as easily chuck it in to something like VT/ VTI and just let it ride. If I were to buy a home outright, we could stop wasting money on rent and simply save and invest more.…