How to invest 100k
"How to spend the money is up to you. That includes spending money on your house. (This is a safer way to look at it than an ""investment"". Not that it can't ever be treated as such, but that doing so often makes it easy to justify bad decisions and overspending on the house.) So with regards to the mortgage: So if it's not a monstrously huge deal, you might prefer to avoid default. Now,  how to invest the rest while waiting to spend it, now..." "Your question is listed as ""How to invest 100k"", not how would I find someone without a hidden agenda - so I'll answer that: It depends. I believe the best choices available are essentially as follows: If you are looking to pay for your childrens' college, it might be nice just to put the money in a Roth IRA and have that done right off the bat. If you disciplined enough to keep the money invested in some type of stock indexed fund, that might be good - the stock market has often outperformed almost every other form of investment over the very long haul. But if you could see yourself tapping it for things, then you might not want this. Another option is to put the money against your house. If that doesn't pay it off, refinance the remaining portion into a lower rate for less years. Obviously this knocks down a huge portion of the interest (duh) and gives you a nice cash flow you can use for investing. Also, the money you've put into a primary residence is pretty safe. I believe in some cases, safe even from bankruptcy. But as you've noted, being underwater on the home you are essentially throwing that money away in some way or fashion. And really, all in all, houses are terrible investments. You never really get your money out of your primary home, unless you downsize. The money is essentially ""saved"" without an equity line. This is a good choice if you're not disciplined. Your choice depends on: Of course, you can do any combination of these things and as Dave Ramsey is apt to remind his listeners and callers: you ought to have your emergency fund set before you do any of these things." The best way to invest in college for your kid is to buy an investment property and rent it out. You might think I am really crazy to ask you to you to buy a real estate property when everyone is running from real estate.  Go where others are running away from it. Look where others are not looking. Find out the need for a decent rental property in your city or county and start following the real estate market to understand the real activities including the rental market. I would say follow it for 6 months before jumping in with any investment.  And manage your property with good tenants until your kid is ready to go to college. By the time your kid is ready for college, the property would have been paid off by the rents and you can sell the property to send your kid to college.
Here would be the general steps to my mind for creating such a plan: Write out the final desired outcome. Is it $x in y years to fund your retirement? Is it $a in b years to put as a house down payment? This is the first step in defining how much money you want at what point in time. Consider what is your risk tolerance and how much time do you plan on spending in this plan. Is it rebalancing once a quarter and that's it or do you plan on doing monthly research and making tweaks all the time? This is slightly different from the first where one has to be mindful of how much volatility would one handle and what time commitment does one have for an investing strategy. Also, how much money would you be adding to the investments on what kind of time table would also be worth noting here. Construct the asset allocation based on the previous two steps along with historical returns averaged out to be a first draft of what you are buying in general. Is it US stocks? Is it a short-term bond fund? There are more than a few choices here that may make sense and it is worth considering based on the first couple of responses that determine what this will look like. Retirement in 40 years may be quite different than a house down payment in 2 years for example. Determine what brokerages or fund companies would offer such funds along with what types of accounts you'd want to have as in some countries there may be tax-advantaged accounts that may be useful to use here. This is where you're almost ready to start by doing the homework of figuring out how will things work. This may vary depending on one's jurisdiction. Get the applications from whatever institutions you'll be using and run with the desired asset allocation across various funds and accounts. Note that in the first few steps there were points of being aware of how much would you have, how aggressive are you investing and so forth. This is where you actually send in the money and get things rolling. Run with the plan and make tweaks as needed to achieve result, hopefully desired or better. "The answer to your question is Forex trading.  You can get to 250K quicker than any other ""investment"" scheme.  You'll just need to start with at least 500K." Nathan's answer was a +1 from me. The answer is not always simple. Having the money available is surely the first step. Using Pete's process aligns with this.  Another thought is depending where you are in your finances, delay by a day for every $100 in cost. e.g. For a $1000 purchase, sleep on it for 10 days. Adjust the number for your circumstance. Yes under certain circumstances! Educate yourself first. Consider algorithmic trading when you code your strategies and implement your ideas - a bit easier for psychology. And let the computer to trade for you. Start with demo account without taking personal risk. Only after a year of experience try small amount of cash like you said 100$. Avoid trade when big news events are released. Stick to strategy, use money management, stop loss, write results in the journal... learn & improve... be careful it is very hard journey. "1000 (£/$/€) is also not a lot to start with.  Assuming you want to buy stocks or ETFs you will be paying fees on both ends.  Even with online brokerages you are looking at 7.95 (£/$/€) a trade.  That of course translates to a min of .795% x 2 = 1.59% increase in value you would need just to break even already. There is a way around some of this as a lot of the brokerages do not charge fees for their ETFs or their affiliated ones. However, I would try to hold out till at least $5000 before investing in assets such as stocks.  In the meantime there are many great books out there to ""invest in knowledge""." I won't make any assumptions about the source of the money.  Typically however, this can be an emotional time and the most important thing to do is not act rashly. If this is an amount of money you have never seen before, getting advice from a fee only financial adviser would be my second step.  The first step is to breathe and promise yourself you will NOT make any decisions about this money in the short term.  Better to have $100K in the bank earning nearly zero interest than to spend it in the wrong way. If you have to receive the money before you can meet with an adviser, then just open a new savings account at your bank (or credit union) and put the money in there.  It will be safe and sound. Visit http://www.napfa.org/ and interview at least three advisers. With their guidance, think about what your goals are.  Do you want to invest and grow the money?  Pay off debt?  Own a home or new large purchase?  These are personal decisions, but the adviser might help you think of goals you didn't imagine Create a plan and execute it. Compound interest is your friend. For such a low amount of cash, just pop it into savings accounts or deposits. When you reach about 1.500€ buy one very defensive stock that pays high dividends. With deposits, you don't risk anything, with one stock, you can lose 100% of the investment. That's why it's important to buy defensive stock (food, pharma, ...). Every time you hit 1.500€ after, buy another stock until you have about 10 different stock in different sectors, in different countries. Then buy more stock of the ones you have in portfolio. You're own strategy is pretty good also. You have to call Interactive Brokers for this. This is what you should do, they might even have a web chat. These are very broker specific idiosyncrasies, because although margin rules are standardized to an extent, when they start charging you for interest and giving you margin until settlement may not be standardized. I mean, I can call them and tell you what they said for the 100 rep. "My advice would be to invest that 50k in 25% batches across 4 different money markets. Batch 1: Lend using a peer-to-peer account - 12.5k The interest rates offered by banks aren't that appealing to investors anymore, at least in the UK. Peer to peer lending brokers such as ZOPA provide 5% to 6%  annual returns if you're willing to hold on to your investment for a couple of years. Despite your pre-conceptions, these investments are relatively safe (although not guaranteed - I must stress this). Zopa state on their website that they haven't lost any money provided from their investors since the company's inception 10 years ago, and have a Safeguard trust that will be used to pay out investors if a large number of borrowers defaulted. I'm not sure if this service is available in Australia but aim for an interest rate of 5-6% with a trusted peer-to-peer lender that has a strong track record. Batch 2: The stock market - 12.5k An obvious choice. This is by far the most exciting way to grow your money. The next question arising from this will likely be ""how do I pick stocks?"". This 12.5k needs to be further divided into 5 or so different stocks. My strategy for picking stock at the current time will be to have 20% of your holdings in blue-chip companies with a strong track record of performance, and ideally, a dividend that is paid bi-anually/quarterly. Another type of stock that you should invest in should be companies that are relatively newly listed on the stock market, but have monopolistic qualities - that is - that they are the biggest, best, and only provider of their new and unique service. Examples of this would be Tesla, Worldpay, and Just-eat. Moreover, I'd advise another type of stock you should purchase be a 'sin stock' to hedge against bad economic times (if they arise). A sin stock is one associated with sin, i.e. cigarette manufacturers, alcohol suppliers, providers of gambling products. These often perform good while the economy is doing well, but even better when the economy experiences a 2007-2008, and 2001-dotcom type of meltdown. Finally, another category I'd advise would be large-cap energy provider companies such as Exxon Mobil, BP, Duke Energy - primarily because these are currently cheaper than they were a few months ago - and the demand for energy is likely to grow with the population (which is definitely growing rapidly). Batch 3: Funds - 12.5k Having some of your money in Funds is really a no-brainer. A managed fund is traditionally a collection of stocks that have been selected within a particular market. At this time, I'd advise at least 20% of the 12.5k in Emerging market funds (as the prices are ridiculously low having fallen about 60% - unless China/Brazil/India just self destruct or get nuked they will slowly grow again within the next 5 years - I imagine quite high returns can be had in this type of funds). The rest of your funds should be high dividend payers - but I'll let you do your own research. Batch 4: Property - 12.5k The property market is too good to not get into, but let's be honest you're not going to be able to buy a flat/house/apartment for 12.5k. The idea therefore would be to find a crowd-funding platform that allows you to own a part of a property (alongside other owners). The UK has platforms such as Property Partner that are great for this and I'm sure Australia also has some such platforms. Invest in the capital city in areas as close to the city's center as possible, as that's unlikely to change - barring some kind of economic collapse or an asteroid strike. I think the above methods of investing provide the following: 1) Diversified portfolio of investments 2) Hedging against difficult economic times should they occur And the only way you'll lose out with diversification such as this is if the whole economic system collapses or all-out nuclear war (although I think your investments will be the least of your worries in a nuclear war). Anyway, this is the method of investing I've chosen for myself and you can see my reasoning above. Feel free to ask me if you have any questions." "Sure. For starters, you can put it in a savings account. Don't laugh, they used to pay noticeable interest. You know, back in the olden days.  You could buy an I-bond from Treasury Direct. They're a government savings bond that pays a specified amount of interest (currently 0%, I believe), plus the amount of the inflation rate (something like 3.5% currently, I believe). You don't get paid the money -- the I-bond grows in value till you sell it. You can open a discount brokerage account, and buy 1 or more shares of stock in a company you like. Discount brokerages generally have a minimum of $500 or so, but will waive that if you set the account up as an IRA. Scot Trade, for instance. (An IRA, in case you didn't know, is a type of account that's tax free but you can't touch it till you turn 59 1/2. It's meant to help you save for retirement.) Incidentally, watch out of ""small account"" fees that some brokerages might charge you. Generally they're annual or monthly charges they'd charge you to cover their costs on your account -- since they're certainly not going to make it in commissions. That IRA at Scot Trade is no-fee. Speaking of commissions, those will be a big chunk of that $100. It'll be like $7-$10 to buy that stock -- a pretty big bite. However, many of these discount brokerages also offer some mutual funds for no commission. Those mutual funds, in turn, have minimums too, but once again if your account's an IRA many will waive the minimum or set it low -- like $100." To build a $100M business, you need to become a 0,1% of Airbnb size and wait until it grows by ~3 times (assuming its $31 valuation) or goes down. And you will go down together. To much risky be any platform dependent, huh? It sounds like you are soliciting opinions a little here, so I'll go ahead and give you mine, recognizing that there's a degree of arbitrariness here.  A basic portfolio consists of a few mutual funds that try to span the space of investments.  My choices given your pot: I like VLTCX because regular bond index funds have way too much weight in government securities.  Government bonds earn way too little.  The CAPM would suggest a lot more weight in bonds and international equity.  I won't put too much in bonds because...I just don't feel like it.  My international allocation is artificially low because it's always a little more costly and I'm not sure how good the diversification gains are. If you are relatively risk averse, you can hold some of your money in a high-interest online bank and only put a portion in these investments. $100K isn't all that much money but the above portfolio is, I think, sufficient for most people.  If I had a lot more I'd buy some REIT exposure, developing market equity, and maybe small cap.  If I had a ton more (several million) I'd switch to holding individual equities instead of funds and maybe start looking at alternative investments, real estate, startups, etc. "You can do several things: After the fact: If you believe the stock will go up, you can buy more stock now, it's what's called ""averaging"". So, you bought 100 at $10, now it's at $7. To gain money from your original investment it needs to raise to over $10. But if you really think it'll go up, you can buy and average. So you buy, say, 100 more stock at $7, now you have 200 shares at $8.50 average so you gain money on your investment when the stock goes over $8.50 instead of $10.  Of course, you risk losing even more money if the stock keeps going down. Before the fact: When you buy stock, set 'triggers'. In most trading houses you can set automatic triggers to fire on conditions you set. When you buy 100 shares at $10, you can set a trigger to automatically sell the 100 shares if it drops below $9, so you limit your losses to 10% (for example)." 100k may not be a lot for your area, but if you're really concerned about feeling like a failure just take your 100k and move somewhere with a lower cost of living, and you will soon see what real failure looks like (although to be blunt for the sake of honesty, 11/hr in OC means you may in fact be a failure). I mean some VCs focus on technology companies, that's a sector focus, but a very broad one. Are you saying you don't want to be limited to one sector?   Also keep in mind that series B investments are much more expensive then A rounds, just because there is more proof and less risk.   I know of some angel investors that invest by size rather than industry, maybe you could partner up with them. All depends on how much capital you have/ how much involvement you want to have with the company.