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Building up $5,000 to invest isn鈥檛 easy 鈥� no matter how you did it, the process likely involved a fair amount of penny pinching and going without.

So here鈥檚 the good news: Investing that money is fairly easy. It鈥檚 an amount that falls well above most and account minimums, and it gets you past many mutual fund minimums. Both are snags that investors with lesser amounts often hit.

Here are聽five ways to聽invest $5,000.

Grab 401(k) matching dollars

If your employer offers a or other retirement plan with matching dollars, you don鈥檛 want to miss out on those. If you haven鈥檛 grabbed them, that鈥檚 your first choice for this extra money.

But getting a lump sum into a 401(k) is a little tricky. You can鈥檛 make a deposit; these accounts are funded via your paycheck. What you can do is a little workaround: First, stash that $5,000 in a savings account. Most 401(k) plan providers allow you to change your contribution amount at any time, which means you can temporarily ramp up how much is pulled out of each paycheck.聽To account for that deduction, repay yourself from the savings account each pay period. Do this until you鈥檝e drained the savings account, at which point you can adjust your contribution back down or stop it altogether.

The payoff: Let鈥檚 say your employer matches 50%, and you get that $5,000 into your 401(k) and then stop contributions. After 30 years at a 7% return, your balance would be more than $57,000.

Come close to maxing out your IRA for the year

With $5,000, you can nearly have your pick of the litter, in terms of account choice. But may we strongly suggest an IRA?

This is a retirement account that allows you to invest independent of your employer. If your company doesn鈥檛 offer a 401(k) or you鈥檝e already contributed enough to your plan to , you鈥檙e probably a good candidate for an IRA.

There are two types of IRAs, Roth and traditional. The major difference is in their tax treatment: Contributions to a traditional IRA are tax deductible, but distributions in retirement are taxed. Roth IRA contributions net you no immediate tax benefit, but you can pull the money out 鈥� along with investment earnings 鈥� tax-free in retirement. Both have , currently set at $5,500 per year. You鈥檒l nearly hit the top of that in one clean deposit.

If you鈥檝e already maxed out your IRA for the year, and this is extra money on top of that, you鈥檒l want to open a instead. It allows you to invest but doesn鈥檛 offer the tax perks of an IRA.

The payoff: At a 7% return, you鈥檙e looking at $40,000 in 30 years 鈥� plus those IRA tax benefits.

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Diversify with commission-free ETFs

You鈥檙e well over the standard mutual fund minimums, which typically hover between $1,000 and $2,500.

But one or two mutual funds does not a diversified portfolio make.聽That means it can still be relatively difficult to diversify, even with as much as $5,000.聽(The exception: target-date funds, which are inherently diversified so you can put your full investment in a single fund. These can have high 聽but are one option for investors who prefer to be hands off.)

Buying five $1,000-minimum index funds isn鈥檛 the answer. That would get you equal exposure to the asset classes tracked by those funds, which probably isn鈥檛 the asset allocation you want. In most cases, particularly if you鈥檙e young, you鈥檇 want much more exposure to stocks and minimal exposure to bonds.

Enter , which are a form of index fund that . That means you avoid the whole minimum song and dance altogether and instead pay a share price to buy into the funds. In most cases, that share price will be much lower than the typical fund minimum, meaning you can buy more funds, get more diversification and spread your money in a way that makes sense for your age and risk tolerance.

You can buy ETFs through your聽IRA or through an online brokerage account. In either case, you鈥檒l want to pay attention to and focus on so you鈥檙e not paying a fee 鈥� which can run up to $10 鈥� each time you buy and sell. A broker鈥檚 fund screener can help you narrow down its fund choices.

The payoff: While both have a place in most portfolios, stocks and bonds perform differently. Stocks offer higher returns at a greater risk, and bonds offer lower returns but balance out that risk. Over the past 20 years, . If you have the appetite and time horizon for risk, it pays to take it.

Get help from a robo-advisor

If the last section went over your head, we have an alternative solution: robo-advisors, which do all the work of diversifying for you, managing your investments for an annual fee of around 0.25%.

With a $5,000 initial deposit, you can choose from several options: has no account minimum but charges $3 a month to accounts under $10,000 that don鈥檛 agree to auto-deposits of at least $100 a month. That means failing to keep up your savings momentum once you鈥檝e opened the account could cost you 鈥斅燽ut on the other hand, an impending fee can motivate you to avoid it, which could push you to save more.

may be a better choice, because it manages the first $10,000 deposited for聽free. is also free of management fees and has no account minimum, and you鈥檒l just sneak by the $5,000 minimum of Charles Schwab鈥檚 robo-advising arm, .

At a robo-advisor, you can or a taxable brokerage account.

The payoff: Peace of mind that someone 鈥斅爋r rather, something 鈥� has an聽eye on your investments. Robo-advisors also boast higher returns, though because most of these companies are fairly new, we鈥檝e yet to see whether that advantage holds up over the long term.

Boost your financial security

Sometimes you get the biggest return on your investment by paying off credit card debt or creating an .

Many people don鈥檛 consider those an investment, but at the risk of sounding impolite, they鈥檙e wrong. Credit card interest rates can range from the single digits 鈥� if you鈥檙e lucky 鈥� to 20% or more. Paying off the balance is the equivalent of an investment return equal to your card鈥檚 interest rate. Not having an emergency fund often turns into carrying debt on one of those cards. Once that ball gets rolling, it鈥檚 extremely difficult to stop it.

If you鈥檙e carrying debt at an interest rate that鈥檚 higher than what you could earn through long-term investing 鈥� the 7% we鈥檝e used in all of the above calculations is a good tipping point 鈥� that $5,000 will go the furthest if you use it to pay that off.

If you don鈥檛 have an emergency fund, put that cash in a liquid vehicle, like a . An聽online bank typically pays the most interest, around 1% right now.

And if you鈥檙e torn between the two? Put $500 in the bank for a little peace of mind, then use the remaining cash to wipe out debt.

The payoff: Settling a $5,000, 18% interest rate in one chunk, rather than making minimum payments over time, will save you more than $4,000.

Arielle O鈥橲hea is a staff writer at NerdWallet, a personal finance website. Email: aoshea@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: . This article first appeared at .