No but it can buy a more comfortable form of misery. 
Donate a chunk of it to me, your long lost quirky uncle you never had.
Health food craziness? A pizza place failing? :smack:
I’ll add my voice to the “put the money in an index fund, let it grow, and do what you would have otherwise done” crowd.
While saving it for your retirement should be the default assumption, if something happens where a strategic infusion of money would make a major difference in your life, you’ve got it available.
E.g. if you and your partner decide you want kids, but it turns out you can’t have 'em the old-fashioned way, both adoption and fertility treatments can run well into five figures. Having the money you’d need already on hand, rather than having to go into debt, is one hell of a nice feeling, I can assure you from personal experience.
Maybe this will happen to you, probably not - but there’s a good chance of something happening along the way where being able to pull, say, $20K out of a hat can make all the difference in the world.
Also, this is a LOUSY period to invest in a franchise opportunity. The corporations that run these businesses increasingly see franchises as a way of downloading most of the costs and risk of their business on someone else (that would be you), while keeping most of the profits.
And that’s the reputable ones like McDonalds and other national chains everyone’s heard of. Then there are smaller outfits whose profits seem to be in selling franchises and franchise equipment, rather than in the supposedly underlying product.
Split it between a deposit for a house and your retirement funds but do splash out on something.
FIRE is an acronym for Financial Independence Retire Early. One site I follow is http://www.early-retirement.org
Associated with that site is a forecasting application called FireCalc that is about as good as the ones used by many financial advisors.
Just one word: plastics.
Hey pal this isn’t a dating website - just kidding.
I would say from personal experience that $300,000 seems like a hell of a lot more money at 25 than it does at 35.
Think of it this way, it is only the equivalent to making about 38k a year for 10 years(300,000 after taxes). I wouldn’t touch it for at least a year, probably 2 - I would just put it in savings or very low risk investments. Let it all sink in, get used to the fact you have that money at your disposal.
Going down the path of thinking you can just grow that kind of money into a much larger amount easily or getting into the habit of living a lifestyle that requires the use of that money means you probably will have none of it left by the time you’re 35 - which is when you really start wishing you had some savings.
Or what Flight said.
If you don’t like the idea of sitting on it - and are handy (can do home repairs including plumbing and electrical) and you are staying in one place for the foreseeable future, depending on your area, buying a home to rent out can be a decent investment. But its a lot of work, your tenants can trash your place leaving you with thousands of dollars in repairs, you may have issues collecting rent…it isn’t risk free and will involve work. But, if you do your research, buy for a decent sort of tenant, and can handle your own repairs - it isn’t a bad way to turn a few hundred thousand into a cash generating machine.
Buying a fixer upper and trying to rent it out is usually at least a part time job and often a full time headache. I think investing wisely like some of the other posters are mentioning is a better idea, unless as you mentioned the OP is very handy or has a lot of experience in the building trades.
A lot of people don’t account for the repair cost or the opportunity costs properly in this situation. If you have a tenant and something goes wrong you have a lot less flexibility in taking your time to get the problem repaired or in how you repair it. Also, trying to evict someone can be expensive and emotionally draining - sometimes the court costs alone are several hundred dollars. I think it would be better to put that time and energy into building a career IMHO.
In a numerical way I’m kind of thinking of this -
Say that you can invest and get 7% in a low risk investment. On 100,000 you are earning 7000 dollars a year. Lets say you charge rent of 1000, that’s 12,000 a year so you are only getting 5,000 a year more for all that work than if you just put it in the 7% ROI fund. Then say you have 2,000 of repairs - even basic plumbing problems can run you half that; any significant roof problem is going to go way over that. With this you have 3,000 for the year so you’re profiting $250 a month - you could work about 8 hours a week at an $11 an hour job to make the same amount with no risk of losing money.
This is a very simplified version of course, but its a start.
Having re-read the OP, my thoughts are:
[ul]
[li]While 300k is a large sum, as a Western WA resident, it is only 5 or 6 years of comfortable living.[/li][li]300k won’t generate a living income in typical investments.[/li][li]You are probably a good fit for the high tech job market here.[/li][li]If I were to franchise something, I would do so only after working counter at that sort of business for a couple of years. To make sure I like doing it and to learn the ropes.[/li][li]I have never known a 25 year old franchisee. Most are experienced in business and investing.[/li][li]300k is a potential fortune - it puts an early retirement in your 40s or 50s within your reach.[/li][/ul]
Open a Del Taco in Bellingham. Or a Wienerschnitzel. I’d go to both of them (but more to Del Taco). 
I have long lost relative in Nigeria I can set you up with. He just faxed me the other day, I think I still have it around here somewhere.
We’re expanding our Taekwondo school if you’d like to invest. 
Seriously…I agree with the investment crowd. Go see a good financial adviser and put your money to work for you.
By other posters, do you mean me?
I’m not talking about a fixer upper - that would be a huge pain. I’m talking about a home in good repair - but you still need to have skills because bringing in a plumber every time a toilet needs fixing or an electrician every time a fixture needs replacing or a painter every time your tenants turn over eats into your profit. THAT is why you want to have some skills - not to fix a roof.
AND you need to do your research, something else I mentioned. There has to be a big enough delta between the rent you get, your expenses - including taxes and the income and gain you’d see in the purchase of a mutual fund. In some parts of the country, there is, and you can do way better than 7%, especially if you can keep management overhead down by doing your own painting and fixing your own toilets, can act as your own management company, and get good tenants.
AND it isn’t for the faint hearted - I’d put in all in a Vanguard index fund myself (well, actually I wouldn’t and haven’t, I have a more divested portfolio, including some individual stocks - but I buy stock like other women buy shoes - only with more thought and research. Besides, I’m not sure Vanguard has dropped back to where it should be after its mention by Buffet in the BH annual report). But its an option for someone who wants a more active role that simply investing and sitting back.
(For reference, I owned a rental home for two years, and sold it because I didn’t want to be a landlord. When I owned it, it was a non-profit enterprise, my brother in law lived in it while he had terminal cancer. But I know what my expenses were and what market rent would be - if it were close enough to where I live (it wasn’t) and if I could do my own maintenance (I pay someone else for my own home), I’d have a 20% return on my money each year - not including the appreciation on the home, which we bought at the bottom of the market).
I think we mostly agree Dangerosa. My numbers are an extremely simplified version of what I think would need to be calculated to properly assess the viability of buying a home in order to generate rental income.
I am looking at the situation in terms of economic profit (which includes opportunity cost of the OP’s time and money) and accounting for the time of the OP in the calculation, and also hinting at the risk factors involved. The OP seems fortunate in that he is tech savvy and attended a good school in London. My thinking is that if all factors are properly accounted for the OP may be better focusing his energy on a job instead of trying to enter the landlord business. On the other hand people certainly can make a lot of money in Real estate from what I know. Without more details it is not really possible to give a very useful answer.
On the whole I think I am a bit more pessimistic about the investing in a property for rental income, but I wouldn’t say that it should be out of the realm of things to consider either. With what I know so far about the situation, I think RTFirefly has the best advise.
There are a couple of problems with this advice.
The maximum Roth contribution is currently $5,500. Unless it goes up really dramatically in coming years, it will take decades to invest $300K. In the meantime, the uninvested money will be earning minimal interest and losing value to inflation.
Also, the FDIC only insures $250K. So nobody should keep more than that in savings accounts at a single institution.
My non-expert advice to the OP is to calculate your living expenses for six months and keep that amount liquid, either in a savings account or low-risk money market. Invest the rest, as others have already suggested, in low-expense index funds. Either pick a fund which automatically adjusts your asset allocation (the proportion you have in large cap stocks, small caps, foreign stocks, bonds, etc.) based on your age, or use one of the many online calculators to figure out a good allocation and adjust it manually every year or two.
Unfortunately 300K isn’t enough to retire on, so you will need to get a job. You have a good safety cushion, so you can afford to be reasonably selective. Try to find something you don’t hate too much.
This is actually where Im currently living.
I got my rib broken testing for my blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do right before I left the USA. Im stuck with back problems that Im still dealing with today.
Im going to consider investing it into something safe. 7% a year as mentioned above sounds good, what kind of risk would I be taking with this kind of investment? Where can I start researching more about investments like this? Other then talking to a financial adviser right off the bat.
I’d look into going into the cell phone repair business. Somebody has to fix all those ipads and smart phones.
I would suggest the Motley Fool website and a few Motley Fool books on basic investment for beginners. Think of this money as your cushion in case of emergency not as your entire career earnings for life.