A few days ago, I Sold A Bit Of QBTS (QBTS At 40 So Soon). Listen to a lot of pundits, and it would sound like the money would already be allocated, spent, redistributed. Nope. I’m sitting on those decisions. Conventional wisdom can make it seem that cause and effect have no gap between them. Got the money, do something with it. Eventually. The world is acting quickly enough. I don’t need to accelerate it, and I don’t see the need for it to accelerate me.

Sell some stock. The money ‘settles’ eventually. Sometimes money flows, even digital ones, run into physical or procedural limitations. After I sell a stock, I prefer to wait a few days to make sure I get the cash. I’ve never had cash from a stock sale get lost, but scroll back to when the banks (including the SEC) lost the money from my house sale. (My Money (And Almost My House) Lost In The Wire) 
I’ve taken a week to think. That’s a luxury I don’t want to waste.

The cash should be enough to pay for a few years’ living expenses, but that’s not hard considering that I am getting Social Security (a tenuous proposition), my pension from Boeing (which is about as much as the rent on my storage unit), and my frugal lifestyle (which is a great enabler.) 
I bought the ability to take my time.

And I can dream and scheme.

Scheme? Nothing Machiavellian. Ah. I’ll more appropriately call it planning. What will I do with what I’ve got, and when will I do it?

The long list starts to collect in my thoughts: where to reinvest, pay taxes, begin to repay a personal loan, what to buy, what to keep in reserve, what to use for those living expenses, and treats and how to treat myself. 

Rearrange that.

Taxes first. I won’t need to pay them for a while, but long-term capital gains must eventually be paid. I probably won’t set up a savings account, but I will make sure there’s enough cash to pay the government’s bill. I probably also won’t sell again this year, just to keep the taxes simple – and be ready to change that because the only constant (especially in this current world) is change.

Loans. Friends provided a buffer when I had none, and should be recompensed. Hey, if they don’t need it, great, then they can pay it forward and continue the generosity. 

Reinvest. One way to keep me from spending… Nah. I wouldn’t just spend the money; I’m frugal, remember. But, maintaining my portfolio means tending to the existing positions, and maybe adding one or a few. I am sure some investors, and definitely some traders and speculators, would already redirect the funds into other investments. I’ll wait. I might miss an opportunity ( and LUNR and SLDP are rising as I type), but I might also find a new and therefore more diverse investment. Stay tuned. I may post my research to my One Company One Story video channel .

Buying stuff. Are kitchen appliances considered stuff? My life in my tiny house (MyTinyExperiment.net) has been proving to me how little I need. There’s always something to buy, but little that I actually need. So, I’ll buy a bit of the little I don’t have, but I’ll also shop for two new kitchen appliances: a refrigerator and a range. This house’s gear is almost twenty years old. The fridge makes noises. It also makes ice in ways that aren’t cubes, but as thick old frost. The range may go, too. Swapping propane out and bringing induction and convection in will be a nice upgrade, and may mean a few more square feet of living space. The details should show up in my tiny house blog if I do that.

Living Expenses. Hey, if Social Security continues, that anything I set aside for living expenses could be (frugal) luxury expenses. For me, that’s occasionally eating at a restaurant. Still, it is nice to not be living on the financial edge. Considering current politics, I’ll keep about a year’s expenses in cash, just in case.
Reserves. Gotta have reserves, and in my financial situation, there’s an overlap with those possibly under-spent living expenses. Yet another cash cushion to keep track of.

Treats and treating myself. I’ve lived in the land of necessity and in the land of choice. For over a decade, my frugality was by necessity. Fortunately, I lived frugally by choice for decades before that. Now, I am returning to frugality by choice, and comfort; but I feel a delayed deficit of treating myself well. I pause as I type, which shows me that even considering treating myself better will take an effort. My newest book, Muddling By, is about living in each of our wealth classes, middle-class, millionaire, and muddling by. A rich person who becomes poor must change their spending habits. A poor person who spends as if they are rich will never be rich, except by luck. What I witnessed was too many people who didn’t adapt to their changes. Yesterday, I treated myself to a visit to my doctor about a question. It wasn’t an emergency. I was curious. They had time. I bought some insights. Treat! But, I also know that I have lost the emotional freedom to treat myself to a vacation. Even my recent coast-to-coast road trip was organized as a long chore, essentially. I have to re-free my mind to be comfortable taking time for me without worrying about agendas and expectations. Let’s see if I manage to go somewhere and do nothing for more than a couple of days.

Don’t spend it all in one place. I’ve heard that phrase thrown my way whenever I’ve celebrated some financial success. Have I ever spent it all in one place? No. When you give someone advice, listen to it yourself because it may only be one part of you talking to another part of you and using someone else as an excuse to have that internal conversation. I wonder if they’ve ever spent it all in one place. Would they if they could? I know if there’s enough to worry about taxes, there’s probably a long list of possible places for the money to flow to. Getting the money and spending it the next is a necessity for some, but taking the time to consider treats time as the luxury it is. Time is precious. Life is fast enough. I’ll do what I must, but I’ll also treat myself to taking my time.