This is a very difficult question to answer for the "generic person" - you cant assume they have any one skill or advantage and you also cant assume they have a

This is a very difficult question to answer for the "generic person" - you cant assume they have any one skill or advantage and you also cant assume they have any certain risk profile or goal besides hopefully increasing their money by X dollars over Y years. Its also difficult because firstly you have to look at all the possible investment opportunities and understand if your larger pools of 5k and potentially 2k buy you into any better opportunities. In other words you have to justify why you used the 5k for an investment instead of the 2k - without knowing specifics about the person its quite difficult. With such a small amount of money comparatively to other investors in most environments Id say the person would be best off "investing in themselves" - apply all 3 buckets to learning 3 different potentially marketable skills that they hopefully can eventually leverage to create larger investment buckets. If the amounts were larger I might answer differently but with those amounts your best market is yourself.