23-year-old musical theatre actor inherits $3M, plans to invest it and live off of it for the rest of his life: 'I have no true career prospects.'

Some people are really dealt a lucky hand in life.

Everyone has fantasized about what life would be like if they never had to work another day as long as they lived. It's fun to imagine a day spent on personal projects and leisure, rather than one spent waking up early for work and grinding until it's dark outside. The bittersweet thing about these fantasies is that they are realities for many people, but they're not a reality for you. Even if you've never met someone who got an absurdly large inheritance from their uncle and can live off of that indefinitely, you know they're out there having a grand old time. Still, they constitute a significant exception to the rule. Most people don't go from living an average existence to having $4 million in the bank just by waiting for something extraordinary like that to happen to them. It's technically possible to make millions from doing virtually nothing. There's always a chance that you buy a lottery ticket that's worth over a billion dollars, like that woman in Arkansas just did! But it's just not realistic to sit around and wait for something like that to happen to you. 

The downside of big windfalls is that they can be challenging to manage. If you're not careful about how you save and spend them, you can lose all your money in a few short years. If you come into any sum of money that's bigger than your annual income, it's usually best that you act as if it's not there. You shouldn't quit your job and plan to live on a $100K inheritance because that money doesn't last as long as you'd think it does.