I would start by investing in myself. I would put 100K away so I could do whatever I wanted for a year if things go south (aka invest in my free time), I'd pay

I would start by investing in myself. I would put 100K away so I could do whatever I wanted for a year if things go south (aka invest in my free time), I'd pay off my debt (around 100k) and I'd get a top of the line computer system (desktop/laptop,etc) so that I would be able to be the most productive I could be when writing code. I'd invest in the community by taking time off to contribute to the open source community. With the extra money I have stowed away I could live off that and not have to worry about any income, which would free me to focus solely on learning the larger OSS projects and contributing to them. I would probably put 100K to 200K in a REIT that I'm invested in that gives 13% dividends. After that, I would try some P2P lending since I would have extra income that I could afford to lose since the 500K wouldn't get me to accredited investor status.