What DID you do when you had 1 Million to invest?

[Steve Olafson]

This post is a follow-up to the current post that is asking what would you do if you had 1Million dollars to invest.

I think that there is a lot of value in hearing what people have actually done.  It is real easy to say what you would do.  The trick is actually making this happen.  It is very possible to lose money on investments that you think are safe.  There are a lot of apartment and commercial properties for sale that will NOT make money.  There are a lot of single family homes that are setup as rentals that will lose money for people based on circumstances with rent, price drops, unexpected expenses...

My guess is that if you have made a million dollars that you have some idea of how you are going to invest it going forward.  It is not always straight forward though.  Investing climates change.  What you did to make a million may not be what you are going to do to make the next chunk.  It may be that you had a great run on valuations do to a rising market and you don't see that going into the future.  It could be that you have been sitting on money waiting for the appropriate market to open up. 

You may have decided that it took you too long to make that first M and want to get more aggressive.  The flip side is possible as well.  You may want to sit back and just collect cashflow for a while.

So my question is what have you investors that have had large chunks of money done with it?  Let's say 500K or more in their possession at one time.  Tell us what the environment was at the time and what your thinking was if you would please.  Any detail that you can provide will be helpful to others.