donating to them after listening to an interesting podcast with the founder and bill Simmons <| sep |> Since it ' s discord I ' m guessing it ' s on pc fam <| sep |> I don ' t even care to hear the arguments any more . If Segwit goes through , Im dumping everything and bitcoin is dead to me . <| sep |> If you want to keep at the same risk tolerance level , you can Build a CD ladder that spans multiple years 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 years and when each one matures , invest that into a 5 year e . g . use the 1 year CD ' s proceeds when it matures to buy a 5 year CD . Your money earns a higher rate than a savings account while maintaining some amount of liquidity and same FDICNCUA protection . Buy Ibonds , which are indexed to inflation and the interest is tax deferred . You probably still have time to buy $ 10 k in 2016 . Some people don ' t like it because treasurydirect website is oldlooking and they require notarization but other than that I have not had any problems . If you want to increase your riskreturn , you can Do steadyscheduled investing in stock index funds in a 401 k or a Roth IRA . Do steadyscheduled investing in bondstock balanced funds in a brokerage accountThe big emotional fear with investing is that of losing money . But it ' s just not possible to predict the future accurately , so you have to risk an amount that you will feel OK about losing completely . A big mistake people make is assuming it will always go up it does not and they bow to peer pressure with others like on internet forums cheering them on to put all of their money into it like if it were a craps table . It ' s your money , so you need to decide how much you are OK with possibly losing . To your original questions Max your 401 K contribution up to $ 18000 . This will lower your taxable income for 2016 . If your plan allows for free transfers , have the contribution go into the stable fund or cash account or whatever it is called in your plan that doesn ' t lose principal . You should be able to choose how much and what fund to buy at some point in the future . Open a Roth IRA and put $ 5500 into the cash fund . Same with what fund to buy later , and again you can buy over time to spread out the risk . Increase your exemptions so that you get more money up front rather than the tax refund . Like other people are saying , $ 3300 takehome after ~$ 6900 per month is a lot less than what you should be getting your tax bracket . Maybe you are tithing 10 % or something ? Edit formatting