[sokoloff]

If you have money to invest, invest in low-cost, broad-based index funds. I personally bias slightly towards small cap (said more precisely: I avoid biasing toward large-cap, but to many people, that looks like biasing towards small caps). One specific choice is VTSAX from Vanguard, but there are many others.

Keep an emergency fund of 2-4 months in cash or equivalents, and invest everything else that you can when young. Don’t buy the flashy new car, the rounds of $15 drinks, don’t carry a credit card balance, etc. When the inevitable market gyrations come, do not take the money out. Don’t try to time the market.

If you don’t have much money to get started, consider real estate as a second job. The leveraged nature of that bet is one of the few ways to start from relatively little money and build a nest egg. It’s a second job, though. If you pay a PM to manage it, the PM makes more current income than you do in most cases.

In addition to jacquesm’s advice to read MMM, I also recommend the jlcollins stock series: http://jlcollinsnh.com/stock-series/

[notheguyouthink]

Any thoughts on strategy's for not "if your young" people?

My wife and I (early 30s) have been getting her school debt settled but with little retirement outside of a small 401k, we've started looking at aggressive retirement plans.

At the moment we're just treating everything as the most yield (compounded or not). So her high interest debt is the most yield, however once half of those are out, a lot of investments will yield higher than her debt, so we'll likely shift priorities towards those.

[sokoloff]

30s is still young for retirement purposes, which for at least one of you is likely to extend out to more than 50 years from today.

When considering yield, always consider after-tax yield. Having a 6% non-tax-advantaged debt is better to pay off than a taxable 7% investment.

Here's a good "order of operations" guideline: https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/investment-...

[mbesto]

Early 30's guy here.

First, no matter what you do, construct an asset mix (even if it's wrong) to start, then do research on what is most appropriate for you, stick to it, and just keep investing to each of those buckets.

I think I sit generally along the lines of:

- 60% real estate property - 10% retirement investments (401k, IRA, etc) - 10% Vanguard Index funds (diversified across 5 indices, large cap, SP500, small cap, REIT, etc) - 5% direct stock investments (moderate risk, high reward) - 8% high risk, high reward investments (e.g. seed investments) - ~2% cash (mix of checking account and HYS account @ 1.7% APY)

- 20% of my overall portfolio is basically liquid in case of an emergency

NOTE - do not strictly follow this asset mix, it's just illustrative based on what my wife and I have decided to do.