[ScottBurson]

This is a tough one. I'm not sure there's any answer I could recommend to someone who didn't want to invest the time and effort required to gain some expertise about it. Certainly there are opportunities in the stock markets, the commodities markets, and the currency markets right now, but I wouldn't recommend any of those for novices. Real estate is probably easier, but this is not a great time for it. And yet leaving it in CDs isn't very attractive these days either.

If he could find a good investment advisor, that person could show him how to set up a diversified portfolio. Really, that's probably the best plan. However, I don't know how to find a good advisor; I'm sure even this requires some work. And if they told him to put a lot of his money in stocks, as they might, I'm not sure that would be good advice at the moment.

Starting a startup is something that has to come from within. If he's not already doing it, it's not a good plan.

Really, I think the only good advice I can give is to do some soul-searching, and explore some possibilities (without actually spending any of it yet), and figure out what he wants to do with it. From the sound of it, that in itself is likely to be a big project that he could spend the next year or two on.