Need Advice on What to do with some Money

I like Marcus. None of them pay much though, so it doesn’t really matter. Marcus is easy and transfers very fast in my experience.

I hope this doesn't sound like a dumb question, but I honestly do not know the answer. With that type of account do I have to decide what stocks to buy or can I invest in mutual funds. As you can probably tell by past mistakes of student loan debt and credit card debt I have not always made the best decisions with money.

RVP

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I hope this doesn't sound like a dumb question, but I honestly do not know the answer. With that type of account do I have to decide what stocks to buy or can I invest in mutual funds.

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Yes, it is, but it's really not hard at all.

The choices are endless, but with a little help (and that's available on this board), you can choose some mutual funds, etf's and if you choose to, some individual stocks. I'm 57 and didn't even look at this option until about 10 years ago.

You can put as much or as little time into as you feel. Aren't you glad that your other investments weren't sitting savings accounts for the last 20 years? Do you really want all of your extra cash (and you should have increasingly more based on the picture you painted) sitting in a minimal return account?

These accounts are very liquid. With few exceptions, you can sell shares have as much liquidity as you want in a couple days. And of course, just because it's in that account, it doesn't mean that you can't have it sitting there in cash for maximum liquidity.

I'm not an advisor of any sort. Just offering my point of view.

ETA: People call these accounts by different names, such as taxable accounts, brokerage accounts and such. Examples TD Ameritrade, Schwab, Fidelity and many others. The taxable part is, you will pay taxes on any gains that you realize (collect), but that's true of most any gains that you will make with your money (as opposed to non-taxable Roth and other retirement tools.

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Dude you’re 45 debt free, kids college paid for, and you put a combined 36% in rIRA……. You are doing something right.

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Yeah...that's not what I would call a financial mess

40s are prime earning years for a lot of people so plenty of opportunity to continue building up the nest egg

I’m currently looking for a bank with savings accounts that can be subdivided. For instance, I want to subdivide my savings account to have savings accounts for vacations, kids savings, etc

Good stuff. I need to get a HYSA myself. I like to keep a good bit "liquid" because I never know when I may want to stroke a check for 100-500k for land, farm equipment, toys, etc.

Do ibonds. Making 7% right now and you can cash out anytime you need money. I use ibonds as an emergency fund but it’s also great because the interest is tied to CPI.

I’d also set up a brokerage account and buy some index funds (large cap, small cap value, international) with any extra money. I use M1. You can borrow against holdings for 1-2% if you ever needed money with M1.

First and foremost, don't retire....YET! This is probably the biggest mistake I see all too often. People finally get out of debt, have some money set aside and decide they want to retire, walking away during their most financially productive years of their life.

Find some good ETF's or index stocks that you like and keep putting away.

What does the board think about whole life as an investment vehicle?