<prompt> Human: I just liquidated a high risk investment portfolio for 249,000. My original investment was 5,600, so this is a bit like winning a small lottery. After capital gains taxes, I expect the sum to be around 190,000. Im looking for some advise on how best to use this money going forward.Im 37, married with one toddler, living in Toronto. You have probably heard about the insane housing market in Toronto. My mortgage is presently 426,000 at 2.79. Our monthly payment is 2200 presently. It is a 25 year mortgage and the first five year term is complete in January, 2018. It looks like rates are presently around 2.4 in Ontario. I am permitted to pay up to 70,000 on my mortgage right now, if I wish in addition to my monthly payments. I bought my house for 600,000 about 4 years ago. I havent had it appraised, but I expect it is worth over 800,000 presently. The housing market has been booming, but has just recently started to slow down due to the implementation of a foreign buyers tax. We dont have any other investments, besides about 6000 in a Registered Education Savings Plan for our toddler. We add about 300 to this every month.Combined, my wife and I make about 132,000 year before taxes. We also rent out the basement suite of our house for an additional 1150month. Daycare costs about 17,000 year, or 1416 month.What would the community suggest I do with the 190,000? The simplest answer, to me, is to just put it towards our mortgage. We would then be able to pay it of in 10 years rather than 20. Is this the best way to go? Another option, I guess, is to use the money as a down payment on a rental house. Im sure we could find a house somewhere in Toronto that would earn more for us in rental income than the mortgage would cost to carry at present rates. However, I am not confidant it is a good time to buy real estate in the City and Im also slightly concerned about the added workload of being landlord to another property. Also, if interest rates rise significantly, the rental income may not cover the full mortgage and we would cut into our living income.We live relatively comfortably. However, we can rarely afford to travel abroad, which is what I want to do most. In some ways, I would just like to increase our monthly spending money so we could take a nice vacation every year, do some home renovations, keep an up to date computer, etc., but that seems irresponsible. We also have to save for our daughters education in 16 years.What are your thoughts? Thanks in advance!EDITThank you everyone for all the great advice. Ill probably reread everything multiple times over the next few weeks and use it as a jumping off point for further research and possibly discussions with a financial advisor. This is a great community; I have learned a lot already.  <response>: If you have nothing put aside for retirement, I would strongly suggest starting by filling out you and your wifes TFSA and RRSP contribution room with an investment portfolio that meets your needs. Assuming you already have an emergency fund. If not, do that first. Mortgage rates are so low currently that youll see a better long-term average return in the market than you will by paying the mortgage debt. Obviously there are other benefits to paying a mortgage early, but now is a chance to really catch up and get a good handle on long-term and retirement savings. The TFSA is flexible, remember. The daycare costs will drop when the kids reach school age, so then youll have a lot more monthly cash to save for travel and other things like that. So if it was me? Id probably take some of the 250,000 and set it aside for a nice trip. Then Id finish my emergency fund if it wasnt already full 3-6 months expenses in cash. Then Id put the rest into an investment TFSA andor RRSP. 