Depending on what your goals are, you could invest it to help you reach financial independence. You’ll have other goals, other calls on your money. Many people will aim to buy a home and clear the mortgage, while others have more immediate concerns such as raising a family, or paying for travel.

If the money is spare and you want to direct it toward a more secure future, you should put it toward building assets. There are two sorts of assets – productive and unproductive. Examples of unproductive assets are gold, jewellery, your home (in the sense that it doesn’t generate an income). Productive assets like shares give you an income as well as tending to rise in value over time. The great thing about productive assets is that the cashflow they generate can be reinvested to help you own more productive assets; this is known as compounding, and it speeds up the process of reaching FI a lot.