Cash deployment after a windfall
A large sum just landed.
Now what?
A windfall is one of the highest-stakes, lowest-practice decisions a household makes. The money sits in cash because deploying it all at once feels reckless and deploying none of it feels worse - so it sits, and the indecision quietly costs more than any single allocation mistake would.
Work the decision against a framework. Free, no brokerage login.
The usual triggers
However it arrived, the question is the same.
- An inheritance that landed in cash
- A business sale or partnership buyout
- A vested RSU or option tranche
- A maturing CD ladder or bond that came due
- Years of cash that quietly piled up past your reserve
The source matters because it changes the tax. The worksheet flags the cases that bite - an inheritance is generally not taxable income, an RSU vest is taxed as compensation, and a business sale is taxed on its gain, which with low basis or depreciation recapture can be most or even all of the proceeds. A large realization can also push you into net investment income tax or open a charitable-bunching window.
A deliberate plan, not a guess
Frame it, pace it, record it.
Frame it
Net of tax, against a target
Start from the after-tax amount actually available to invest - an inheritance and an RSU vest carry very different tax. Then deploy against your target allocation, not a guess, so the new money moves you toward the plan rather than away from it.
Pace it
On a timeline you choose
Decide whether to deploy at once or over a set number of tranches. The worksheet shows the schedule either way - the point is a deliberate plan, not a number that sits in cash for eighteen months because deciding felt hard.
Record it
A memo you can revisit
Capture the reasoning - why this allocation, why this pace - so a future you can see the decision rather than re-litigate it. Large, infrequent moves are exactly the ones worth a written rationale.
Inside Ironlake the same workbench saves its memo to your decision journal, and the deployment lands against the model and plan the rest of your dashboard already runs on. Ironlake shows the math and flags the tax; you decide the allocation and the pace - it never recommends a specific security or trade.