>DMV is defintlely not going to give legal advice on how to settle an estate.

Probably not but I'd definitely start there before spending money on a lawyer. Besides OP isn't looking for advice on how to settle an estate, just want to know options on getting rid of a car that's titled to a deceased person. If DMV can't help the only thing lost is time spent on the phone. In the county I live in we have a very good DMV that falls under the tax office.

Understand the issue of legal owner. But I'm sure the DMV can tell them how to proceed with more accuracy than us guessers on Reddit--surely this is not an uncommon issue for DMV.

>Anyway to deal with it without involving a lawyer and courts?

Not sure what the issue is here. A copy of the death certificate and a letter from your father in law could have just signed the car over to you on the title. That with a copy of the death certificate would have probably been enough for DMV. If you called DMV they could probably give you an answer about how to take care of it.

In relation to investing, it's the "fancy" stuff that causes people to underperform with their portfolio. Fortunately Mr. John "Jack" Bogle, the man credited with inventing index investing, realized that and happily shared it with the world.

100% VTSAX for life can be an adequate choice. If that gets to risky you can reduce its allocation by adding a total bond market index fund as you get closer to retirement. Recommend reading JL Collins’ very popular book “A Simple Path To Wealth.”

It is a smart goal as long as the rest of your financial house is in order...primarily emergency fund and long-term investing for retirement. Both of those pots of money should be above and beyond condo savings.

Why can't your Roth be part of your overall dividend portfolio or be used as a portion of your emergency fund? Don't understand why some people consider their retirement accounts objective different from their taxable brokerage accounts. Don't know your age but at some point in life you'll be looking at all of your accounts as one retirement portfolio.

> For fun I did a mock budget of my take home pay after 25% investing and 25% house payment and with taxes, insurance out of the way and all that, I only had enough money to cover my typical expenses and had no margin at all for anything "fun" or even short term savings goals.

So it's apparent then that Money Guy's numbers are base on an income that's greater than yours. All of the popular money "experts" advice is based on generalities. You take the advice and adjust your percentages to meet your personal financial situation. The money experts also cannot account for every municipality in the U.S. I'm sure someone making median income in San Diego (may not be still be current but I used this and this as sources) would be hard-pressed to find adequate housing for 25% of their income.

Don’t forget about the gains for the twelve year period from 2009 through 2021. During that timeframe it was only down twice: -2.23% in 2015 and -5.63% in 2018. Three years during the same timeframe it was up more than 20%. So the moral of this story is “time in the market beats timing the market.”