Unit 3 · Level 3 · DCA & lump sums
The windfall playbook
An inheritance, a bonus, a startup payout: sudden money short-circuits careful brains. Studies of lottery winners are grim reading: large windfalls often evaporate within a few years. The playbook is deliberately unexciting: park it somewhere safe, wait, clear expensive debt, fill the buckets, and only then invest according to the plan you already had.
Free to play. No ads, no token, no account needed to start.
What you get asked
A €30,000 inheritance arrives. Put the playbook in order
The waiting step is load-bearing: big decisions made in emotional weeks are the ones people spend years undoing.
From that €30,000: you clear €6,000 of card debt and fill your emergency fund with €12,000. How much is left to invest per your plan?
€30,000 − €6,000 − €12,000 = €12,000. Notice the order did the thinking: guaranteed-return debt first, safety second, growth last.
Why do planners say 'park a windfall for a few weeks' before deciding anything?
Nothing about the money changes in six weeks, but you do. The cost of waiting is tiny; the cost of an impulsive purchase or panicked 'investment' can be the whole windfall.
For the invest-the-rest step, the League's earlier evidence says a ___ usually beats dripping it in, if your nerves can take it.
Same maths as lesson one: markets rise more often than they fall, so all-at-once wins about two-thirds of the time. DCA over 6-12 months is the honest concession to nerves.
Your cousin inherits €50,000 and immediately wants to put it ALL into one exciting AI stock. Best counsel?
A windfall doesn't change how diversification works. One company can always go to zero. Park, wait, clear debt, fill buckets, then boring diversified investing. The playbook is the plan. 🐜
The rest of this unit
How money gets INTO the plan: drip by drip, all at once, and through the storms.