What to do with £15,000

[Edsta75]

I've had a payout of £15,000 & would like to try turn it into a larger amount without too much risk. Any ideas, thoughts or suggestions?

Do you need access to it? If not you could either put it in a stocks and shares ISA but you need to leave it long term to get the best results, or find a high paying fixed 1 year ISA?

Save it

Do you have emergency savings or any debt? How long before you might want to access it?

Use the financial flowchart to make sure you're covering all other bases first.

How old are you? And when do you want to access the money? Putting 4k a year into a LISA, with 1k topped up by the government is potentially an option.

Risk and returns are a trade-off: you can never get big returns with low risk.

If you put the money into a cash ISA you can earn interest on it, with zero risk of losing money - but you might lose out versus inflation if (say) you get 3% interest and inflation is 5%.

If you put the money into a stocks and shares ISA you can potential earn lots more over the long term, but you have to accept that in some years it will go down - sometimes 20% or more.

It comes down to your personal risk tolerances and also what you are investing it for and how long. If you are investing it for 10-20 years it matters less whether it goes down in some of them. If you are investing for 1 year then it's much more important it doesn't etc.