General Investing/Saving for a beginner

Only you can decide what is right for you but my personal philosophy is as follows:

1) Put 15% of your salary away into retirement accounts from your first paycheck in the real world and keep putting 15% in until you are able to retire. You shouldn't ever have up the percentage later in life. You'll likely avoid ever having to adjust to increasing your savings rates later in life and if you work a long time you'll be able to lower that rate later on.

2) Establish your emergency fund. Decide how many months of safety you want to have in there. Some people like 3 months, some people like to have 9 months worth of emergency money in there.

3) Establish a budget and figure out where you want to spend your money. Do you want to spend your money on a car payment, rent for a nice apartment, mortgage for a house, travel, eating out, etc. Figure out what you want to be the priority so you can decide how much to spend on the others. Some like to spend money traveling while others like to have a nice house over traveling. Figure out what you want.

4) Make sure that you have a minimum amount of disposable cash each month to cover whatever may pop up. I personally like to make sure that after all my monthly obligations are met (bills, clothes, food, gas, utilities, etc.) that I have at least $1k left in my budget unaccounted for. This allows me to comfortably cover random appliance repairs/replacements, car repairs, etc. without depending on carrying a balance on a credit card or taking on a new loan. Those months I dont need it I put that money into savings for whatever I'm saving for (usually a big purchase like down payment, big trip, etc.).

You also need to consider whether you value maximizing your financial returns on your money or valuing financial freedom. This will impact how you budget. Some people like to not pay off loans and rather invest disposable cash into investments with higher returns than the interest rates on the loans. This helps accumulate cash faster but it comes at the cost of flexibility. Some people like having zero debt and feel that freedom/flexibility has a worthwhile value for them.

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have about 10K of cash that's just sitting around that I'd like to put to work for me. Any recommendations on investments with high returns or way in which to find them? I've looked around on Vanguard which is where I have my roth IRA at various stocks/bonds but just don't really know where to start. I've put money in CDs before when I was younger but those were pretty low-yield. Thanks!

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I assume this is money you don't need for an emergency fund or anything.

I do all my investing for retirement at this point for the most part. Any money that doesn't go there and isn't in my emergency fund, I spend.

I don't have much taxed investments so I'm not much help on this specific question. The only dabbling I do in this realm is I put some very small amounts in P2P loans to help people avoid the big banks. I like to "gamble" on 13%+ interest rate loans on lendingclub.com for some entertainment. I'm averaging just over 13% returns there for now but I have only been doing it a couple years.

For specific investments it all depends on your risk tolerance. The best advice would be to find a pro, discuss your situation and goals and develop a plan together, especially if you want to keep throwing side cash in there. If you havent maxed out your Roth IRA you might want to start there because you can always pull that principle back out penalty free. If you are looking at funds, I'm personally a fan of Schwab ETFs. I personally invest in their SCHA, SCHE, SCHF, SCHH, SCHM, SCHX and SCHZ.

Even if I'm trying to save for school in the short term; 1-2 years? Because if I put all that 10K in my roth I can't touch that till I'm like 60 (without penalty) correct?