Shaun GrahamFinance
Windfall tool

Money just landed. Now what?

A bonus, an inheritance, a first vest, a house sale, a settlement, or a checking account that quietly grew too big. Every article about this ends with "consult a professional." This one does the two things those articles skip: it works out how much of the money is actually yours after the tax nobody withheld, then it pours the rest into a specific, ordered list of destinations with your numbers in it.

Private by design: Everything is calculated locally in your browser. Your amounts are not transmitted to Shaun Graham Finance or any third party. Nothing is kept unless you ask — use Save to file near the bottom of the page to keep your own copy.

1

Where the money came from

This is the question that decides everything else. The same $40,000 can be fully taxed, partly taxed, or not taxed at all depending only on its source.

Where it came fromCash you receivedTaxable valueTax withheld
Add everything that landed this year.

A good year can contain several of these, and they have to be priced together — the second one stacks on top of the first and can be taxed at a higher rate than it was. Cash and taxable value are different numbers: a home sale hands you far more cash than taxable gain, and a vest whose shares you kept is fully taxable while paying you nothing at all.

Wages, self-employment profit, interest, pensions, rent — income taxed at ordinary rates. Leave out long-term capital gains and qualified dividends: those are taxed in their own lower brackets and sit on top of everything else, so including them here would report a higher bracket than you are really in.

Actually yours to allocate$0
Estimated total tax on it all$0
Still owed at tax time$0
How that tax estimate breaks down

Which brackets this windfall lands in

RateBracket coversYour sliceTax on it

The bill itself

Estimated with 2026 federal brackets and the standard deduction. Credits, itemized deductions, phase-outs, and the alternative minimum tax are not modeled, so treat this as a set-aside target rather than a tax return.

2

Where you're standing

The right move depends less on the size of the windfall than on which of these gaps you still have open.

Savings you already hold are spent on paper first, against the cushion and then your near-term goals below. The windfall only has to cover what your existing cash does not, and anything left beyond those targets is reported back to you as spare.

3

What you owe

Paying off a balance is the only guaranteed, tax-free return available to a private individual. A 24% card is a 24% return with no risk and no waiting.

What it isBalanceRate
No debts entered. Add any card, loan, or financed balance.

A 0% promotional balance counts as 0% only until it expires — after that the whole deferred interest can land at once. Enter the rate it becomes, not the rate it advertises.

4

What you need it for soon

Money with a date attached inside about five years does not belong in the stock market. This bucket keeps it out.

GoalAmount neededYears away
No near-term goals. Down payment, wedding, car replacement, tuition.
5

Where every dollar goes

Enter an amount to see the plan.

    Invested for the long term$0after every gap above is closed
    What that becomes in 20 years$0ata year foryears
    Cost of leaving it in checking$0per day, versus an ordinary savings rate

    Everything is calculated in your browser; nothing you enter is sent to Shaun Graham Finance. Nothing is stored on this device unless you check the box above; with it clear, a refresh starts from the defaults. When checked, the whole form — including amounts, debts, and goals — is kept in local browser storage, not cookies. That storage is not encrypted, so avoid it on a shared device. Files you save contain the details you entered; protect them like other financial records.

    6

    Worth knowing

    Things that change what you do with this money but do not show up in the arithmetic above. These follow what you entered, so they are the ones relevant to you.

      Important assumptions before planning around these numbers
      • Tax figures use published 2026 federal brackets and the standard deduction. Credits, itemized deductions, phase-outs, the alternative minimum tax, and every state's own rules are not modeled. State and local tax is whatever single flat rate you enter.
      • "Your other income this year" is treated as gross income for the whole year. If your windfall changes your income substantially — a severance that ends a salary, a first year of self-employment — the estimate drifts.
      • Self-employment tax is applied at 15.3% of 92.35% of the amount, with the Social Security portion capped by the wage base your salary has already used. The additional 0.9% Medicare surtax on high earners is not modeled.
      • The priority order is a widely used default, not a personalized recommendation. A stable two-income household and a commission-only freelancer should not hold the same cushion.
      • "Other ordinary income" is treated as exactly that. Long-term capital gains and qualified dividends belong in their own brackets on top, so they are not part of that figure. One place it does assume employment: for side-business income, it treats your other income as wages that have already used up part of the Social Security wage base. If your other income is mostly investments, the self-employment tax shown is too low.
      • Pre-tax contributions are assumed to be fully deductible. A traditional IRA deduction phases out at a much lower income if you or your spouse are covered by a workplace retirement plan — check that before counting on the saving shown here. The deduction is applied to federal tax only, so if your state follows federal adjusted gross income your real saving is somewhat larger than shown.
      • The tax estimate and the plan depend on each other — contributions lower the bill, and the size of the bill decides how much the windfall can contribute. The page settles this in two passes, which is accurate to within a few dollars.
      • Investment projections apply a smooth annual return. Real markets do not, and the order of good and bad years matters. This is arithmetic, not a forecast, and not investment advice.

      The first number is the one that ruins people

      A $40,000 bonus does not put $40,000 in your life. Payroll withheld a flat 22% because that is what the rules tell it to do for supplemental wages — not because 22% is your rate. If your salary already has you in the 24% or 32% bracket, the rest of that bill is sitting quietly in your checking account looking exactly like spendable money until April, when it stops looking like that. Sell some crypto or a chunk of vested stock and it is worse: nobody withheld anything at all, and depending on the size, an estimated payment may be due months before the return.

      This is why the tool asks where the money came from before it asks anything else. Inherited cash is not income and owes nothing. An inherited IRA is ordinary income and owes plenty. A home sale is taxed on the gain after a large exclusion, not on the check. Same amount of money, completely different first move.

      Order beats optimization

      Almost every question that starts "should I invest this or..." has an answer that does not depend on predicting anything. An employer match you are not capturing is an instant 50% or 100% return. A 24% credit card is a guaranteed 24% return, tax-free, with no volatility. A cash cushion is what stops the next surprise from turning back into a 24% credit card. All three of those beat an uncertain 7% before you have to have a single opinion about the market.

      The interesting part is what happens when the money runs out partway down the list. The tool keeps going anyway and tells you what stayed unfunded — because "this windfall closes your emergency fund and half the card, and here is what's left" is a far more useful sentence than a pie chart of an ideal you cannot afford yet.

      The move this page can't do for you

      A windfall cannot be deposited into a 401(k). Contributions to one only ever come out of a paycheck, which is why no bucket above sends money there. But there is a back door, and it is the best use of a windfall that almost nobody makes: raise your payroll contribution — to the full match, or to the annual limit if you can — and live on the windfall while your take-home shrinks. The lump sum never enters the account, yet it is what makes the contribution affordable. If your employer matches and you are not capturing all of it, that is the highest guaranteed return available to you, ahead of every other line on this page. The Employer Match Paycheck Planner works out what you'd need to contribute, including the trap where contributing too fast shuts the match off early.

      The 5% that protects the other 95%

      The fun bucket is not a rounding error, and it is not a moral failing. Windfalls that get allocated with perfect discipline and zero enjoyment have a way of leaking out sideways over the following six months. Naming a deliberate number, spending it on something you actually wanted, and then treating the rest as untouchable is the version that survives contact with being a person.

      When you have the invested slice, take it to the Compound Growth Planner to watch it work, or the Debt Payoff Planner if the balances above are the part that keeps you up at night. If the employer match line was the one you could not answer, the Employer Match Paycheck Planner is the tool that answers it.