You mentioned that in the original Investor thread. 50/50 buyer beware! I put at least half of that on the buyer, but the fact Fido recommended an annuity in the first place, shame.
Keep it growing
My advice is shop financial/wealth/investment is - find a fiduciary first and foremost via this weighting:
local word of mouth 20%,
hard web research (including gov and securities comm) 30%,
forums such as BITOG <10%, ,
gut instinct 10%, (too good to be true type of thing)
fees under 0.25% - 10% weight (screaming red flag if .50% or more) - also flat fee can work
wife >20% - your spouse should be involved to the point of boredom and/or saying trust/you can handle it
Also very important making a budget and sticking with it until some level of stability. I used to hate budgets, but I knew this would be such a life shift, I KNEW I would need it to talk to people FOR advise. 3 separate entities said yeah they would help, but there really are not a ton of worries.
Neither here nor there - But we have zero normal expense drawdown other than perhaps large fun/unnecessary/discretionary projects/capital expenses/fun junk. In fact, just our cheeseball incomes are net positive, and frankly I know there are guys here posting with bucketloads more $ than I.
Lots of rambling, but at 63 you separate health care will need to be addressed. No idea about NJ.
And all this without ANY $ investment advice recommendations, so here are a couple.
Credit union - no cost - for checking and a little savings if they have a bonus.
Investment house for the rest. But think of these things as buckets. Some in money markets, some in extremely short term bond funds that do not rapidly NAV decline with rate changes, maybe shop for individual bonds (gov/agencies), watch for good preferred stocks. Then keep some very long term in wide market funds, which of course depends on how much money you can do without for years (as one way to think about it). No idea on your taxes, and I do like muni bonds for taxable accounts, but that ship kinda sailed, IMHO.
