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I would retire.

I’d buy a moderately nice place in the city I want to libe in, provably 1mil absolute max, depending on property taxes. I would then invest the remainder, ensuring that with relatively stable investments I could live comfortably on the interest going forward, with the interest covering property tax and my expenses.

I would buy a brick house on top of a forested hill. My nearest neighbor would be a 20-minute drive away.

I would work on my magnum opus of tabletop rpg rules, which I would convert into a video game.

I would commission art and fund the construction of shrines to the four tezcatlipocas.

Fund owl habitat preservation.

Put it all on red

Hire a fiduciary and pay off my debts, which I think currently is just my mortgage.

I wouldn’t quit my job straight away. I like my team and I’m learning rapidly having them around.

Travel more, and invest in my hobbies, picking up a couple others that currently are out of reach.

The remaining 14.5 million would grow.

Use the “4% Rule”, this would be an inflation adjusted $200K per year every year (more or less, the “4% Rule” is more of a great observation than a rule).

I would live on a third, give a third to my family, and a third to local organizations.

Start a vegan commune.

Exchange it for Euros

Probably the first thing I would do is to exchange them for gold-backed currencies.

i’d fund a militia to start guerrilla warfare against the bourgeoisie.

Own a house, then business as usual

Pay my mortgage and invest

Drop it in investments and work for another year. The extra year of work is so that I can get the investments to move to long term capital gains tax rates. With that sorted, I can now retire. Even a simple index fund often returns an average around 7%. So that’s ~$350,000/year. Pull $200,000 and leave $150,000 for growth. Exact numbers will fluctuate, but it will be close. I’m going to get taxed at something like 12.5%, or about $25,000 leaving me $175,000 to live on. This isn’t monthly vacations in Tahiti money, but it’s a pretty comfortable living, if I’m not stupid and wasteful. If I really want to stretch things out, I can always move to a lower cost of living country. Though that often carries personal risk with it, and I don’t know if I’d want that extra stress. Numbers would also change based on how that original $5mil got taxed. If it’s something like a lottery win, it would shave the numbers down a good bit by taxes.

I would buy a house, and go to university to study physics.

Nothing crazy. I wouldn’t try to invest it someway to get mo money, beyond an interest bearing savings account, because chances are good I’d lose it.

Pay off my house. Travel a bit--France, Spain, maybe SEA for the food and to experience something different. Buy a camper van and visit the old campgrounds in CA and OR my family had vacations at when I was a kid. Leave as much as I could to my son after that.