Picture for a minute that something extraordinary has happened and you’ve come into some unexpected money. The chances are that you have, at one point or another, daydreamed about what you would do if you came into an unexpected windfall. But now that it’s actually happened you might be unsure of what to do. 

Whether it’s just enough money to purchase a new car or it’s enough to buy a new car multiple times over, it’s important to think carefully about how you’re going to use the money that you’ve come into. The last thing that you want to do is to throw it away on unnecessary purchases and waste the good fortune that’s come your way. 

That’s why it’s so important to take your time to consider what your options are before you start spending anything. Remember, coming into some money has the potential to transform your life, so it’s important that you use it wisely. 

With that in mind, below are a few handy tips and pieces of advice to help you make smart choices when it comes to the money that you’ve come into. I left out the obvious ‘have fun’ with it as I assume you’ll have no problem figuring out how to do that!

Start with a plan

The first step that you need to take is to create a plan for how you would like to spend or save your funds. Although you might have daydreamed about what you could do if you came into some money, now that it’s actually happened the chances are that you’re not quite sure what to do with the funds you’ve come into, which is where taking the time to create a plan comes in. 

The last thing that you want to do is to start recklessly splashing your cash about, so it’s important to take the time to plan things out carefully. By creating an action plan of all the things you might want to use the money for, you can make sure that you don’t do anything rash with the funds and end up wasting them. 

Create an emergency fund 

If you’re going to put money into different pots, which is a great idea by the way, one pot you might want to put some into is your personal emergency fund. All you need to do is open a bank account and put a percentage of what you have into it as an emergency fund, so that should something in your life go wrong, you have a financial safety net in place. 

Decide what you want to save and invest 

This is the hardest part of coming into some money, deciding what you want to save and what you want to invest. It can be tricky dividing your funds up but it’s important to be smart about how you go about it. 

For instance, let’s say you’ve come into $100,000, and you want to take a percentage of that for a home deposit which you will combine with a jumbo loan or mortgage to buy a property, you might also want a percentage of those funds to be saved for different things. 

It’s important to break down your funds into a saving and spending list, so that you can see what you have to spend and where you can spend it. 

There you have it, a guide to how you can better manage the money you’ve come into.

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