First, take a bit of it (5-10k) and blow it on the crap you always wanted. Enjoy life. It's interesting how quickly you tire of buying expensive things. Good to

First, take a bit of it (5-10k) and blow it on the crap you always wanted. Enjoy life. It's interesting how quickly you tire of buying expensive things. Good to learn this lesson early. Then: Education - despite grumblings about rising cost and legends of the Silicon Valley dropout billionaires, a degree still leads to earning an additional $1m+ over your career and provides a good foundation. Getting an education and leaving without debt will put you in a really strong position compared to your peers, who will be weighed down with student loan debt for decades. Housing - Depending on where you are, put 20% down on a 30-year fixed mortgage on a modest but nice house (average for the area). If you move, you can rent it out. The bulk of household wealth is in primary residences. This will put you decades ahead of your peers, who due to student loan debt will be unlikely to be able to purchase homes until well into their 30s. Mutual funds - Mutual funds allow you to match growth in the stock market. You are young so can put money into the aggressive funds which may even beat it, but don't worry too much about beating the market, even pros have a poor track record at that. Just put the rest into a mutual fund and forget about it. Read about Compound Interest to find out why. Thing is, 100k isn't a lot (even if it seems like it now) and you probably don't have enough to do all of the above. But, it can create a great foundation that will allow you to take great risks (starting companies, speculating in real estate/stock market) if you want to, or a steady path to continue down.