<prompt> Human: A little back story: When I was 4 my father died, and ever since then my mom has gotten checks with money to raise me. So when my mom met my step-dad they decided to start saving the money to give to me when I was old enough. So now that Im 18 the money has accumulated to a little over 120,000. I plan to use some of that money for college but once college is over I should still have 90,000 left over, and instead of just letting that money sit and do nothing I am wondering what I can do now that will help me increase the value of the money and give me the best return on investment.  <response>: Read the wiki, especially the tab about windfalls and the 18-25 tab. If youre not in the US, stop reading here.If I were you I would make sure to start maxing out my IRA every year starting now. You can only transfer so much in every year and you must have a job making at least that amount. Then, if you have a job which offers a 401k, I would do a soft transfer of my money into the 401k. By that, I mean I would put a large portion of my paycheck into the 401k while living off of the cash in my savings account. Between the IRA, 401K, and college expenses after 3-4 years youll have all your money in accounts where it can grow tax free. If youre not making a lot money and maxing out a 401k its likely that youll be better off using a Roth IRA rather than traditional. Thats even better, because if thats the case you can access your contributions if you need them in a very dire emergency. You can also take out 10k from an IRA to put a down payment on your first house.Its easy to make a mistake which will cost you 50k or more. Dont count on advice from strangers on the internet. The financial system is both way more complicated than it should be and straightforward enough that you can spend a few weekends reading and figure out a good course of action. The strategy I laid out here might be too advanced for you, but maybe youll find it to be a useful starting point. If you dont want to think about it, ever, just open a betterment account and drop it all in there. Theyll handle all the heavy lifting for you in exchange for a reasonable fee. 