Where to put $5,000 now

What would you do with a million bucks? That's easy. But what about five grand? With a handful of broad goals in mind, here are Money Magazine's picks.

Home Equity Loan

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Rates provided by Bankrate.com.
Goal: Enhancing your home
Best debt-defying move:
Pay down your HELOC
Reducing your home-equity debt pays off in several ways, including freeing up credit for emergencies.

Keep in mind that many borrowers who took a home-equity line of credit a few years ago have watched their payments shoot up by hundreds of dollars a month as interest rates have risen.

At today's average rate, paying down a HELOC is like earning as much as 8.7 percent with no risk.
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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.