$1,000 strategy

Those savings challenges are made clear in a just-released survey of 1,000 Millennials by tax-preparation service Jackson Hewitt that found 66% plan to use their tax refund to “pay off bills or debt” and

37% who said they will “reward themselves.”

Just 40% of respondents said they intend to put at least part of their refund into savings.

To take that cash-crunch reality into consideration, USA TODAY asked Rubicoin to run the numbers anew, assuming Millennials would invest only a third of the average tax refund — or $1,000 annually — in the three popular stocks for the same

10-year period. That initial $10,000 investment would have grown to more than $73,000.

From a pure savings standpoint, using at least some of your tax refund to invest for long-term goals such as retirement is a good idea, says Andrea Coombes, investing and tax specialist at NerdWallet, an online personal finance site.

“For Millennials especially, it makes sense to try to invest their refund because they have time on their side — time to ride out market dips and to let compounding help them max out their savings,” Coombes says.

What she doesn’t recommend, however, is to use the money to buy cryptocurrencies and other speculative investments.

“You’re essentially rolling the dice” with those risky investments, Coombes says, adding “that for longterm savings goals like retirement it is better to build a diversified portfolio with low-cost mutual funds.”