I've saved up $80k USD. What should I do with it?

The world of investing is filled with a lot of bs, conflicts of interest, snake oil, fraud, and plain old incompetence.

Therefore, you need to pretty much learn enough that you could do it all yourself. At that point, you might not do it all yourself, but you'll have a decent chance of judging whether or not someone (advisor, robo-advisor, investment fund, index fund provider etc.) you delegate to knows what they are doing.

And by the way, I'm starting up a hedge fund right now. I can guarantee you an annual 20% return.

Well, it depends on your situation, but in general you could consider:

- Do you have high interest debts? Paying off debt is a guaranteed return.

- Can the money be invested, or is it earmarked for e.g. downpayment for a house, new car, education, or other short to mid-term purchases ? Consider your investment horizon. If it's less than 3-5 years, consider leaving it where it is.

- Can you spend it on yourself, e.g. improve your earning potential or start a business ?

- If you want to invest it in the stock market, I would not try and pick stocks, but spread it across a number of well diversified funds. I also would not spend all the money at once but e.g. aim to invest a chunk of it every month over 6-8 months

Think within the context of broader personal finance considerations, there's already a few good links in the answers.

First off: Well done saving up! If you are paralysed about (getting started with) investing, I can recommend the books "A random walk down Wall Street" and the (very thick but well worth it) "The intelligent investor".

Especially the last one opened my eyes a lot about how to approach investing. I have the revised edition from 2006, though the original publication was in 1949. The 2006 edition has a section after each chapter discussing how the original chapter fared in the decades after publication. Without exception, the lessons discussed in the book from the 1929 recession and earlier turned out to have been very applicable in the dotcom crash of 2000, the "black monday" crash of 1987, etc. It really shows how most things are nothing new and gives a lot of perspective on the markets.

Reading up and understanding how the stock markets work can take away some of the pressure. Finally, there is no rule about having to start big or small. If it makes you feel better, start with $500 and see how it goes. The sister comment by "ForHackernews" about starting with a diversified index fund is good advice (and probably what you'd conclude anyway after reading the books).

I take it you are a young person... First max out your company 401K with as much contribution to the ROTH option as you can afford... invest it in the lowest fee broad market matching index fund (Hint: S&P500) you can find. OK... now hopefully you are down with this and you still aren't eating into that 80K... If you don't need this money for a house, Well... over the long haul investment in the broader stock market "historically" doubles investments every 7 years. So, I'd suggest you open a cheap online brokerage account and first invest as much as you can into a ROTH and drop both ROTH and excess into an (again S&P500?) index mutual fund with the lowest expense ratio that you can find... and... try not to look at it again for the next 30 years except to convert as much each year into ROTH as possible. After 30 years you will hopefully look back into your account and have about $1.5M in that account with... being able to pull some significant amount of that investment out _tax free_. If you do need some of it for a house try to avoid 30 year loans and elect for 10-20 year loans.

Right now is a very risky time to invest. It could be that it turns out to be a good time, because stocks are about 20% below the all-time high. But there could also be a second crash, when investors realize the real impact of the economic crisis caused by Covid-19. In addition to that, there's the risk of inflation caused by government bailouts. What I'm doing right now is keeping about 1/3rd in gold ETF as inflation protection, about 1/3rd in stocks ETFs and the rest in cash. Once the whole thing is over, I will probably move back to stock ETFs.

1. Open a margin account on Interactive Brokers.

2. Choose a target volatility level you're comfortable with (I like 20%).

3. Buy shares of BRKB. Buy enough such that volatility of your portfolio reaches your target volatility.

4. Every month, update your share amount to maintain the same target volatility.

https://alphaarchitect.com/2019/05/22/volatility-targeting-i...

Short answer: Dump it all in VFIAX and ignore it for about 30 years.

Alternately, wait for the housing market freefall that is scheduled to hit about 180 days from now, and buy a foreclosure or two.

EDIT: Cosigning the above recommendation about maxing out a Roth IRA each and every year as well, and of course maxxing out any company-matched 401(k) options.

Pick one or two ETF and set up a monthly amount to invest into them. You don’t need to invest everything at once and the monthly commitment averages out short term effects. If you want to be more active with a part of your money, you can also commit to buy a couple of stocks monthly. If you get rid of poorly performing stocks regularly and rebalance the portfolio you can declare them as capital losses that will count towards any future capital gains.

Dollar cost averaging into an index fund.

After paying down any high interest debts and earmarking at least 3 months worth of living expenses into a savings account or other cash equivalent as an emergency fund.

There’s a great decision making flowchart floating around somewhere or other.

I would actually keep holding it in cash -- that is maybe 2 years of emergency funds if you are married/have a family?

Keep it in cash, pretend you don't have it (create a separate account that is just this sitting there), continue earning and saving. Anything extra you earn after this 80k base you can invest (simple things like index funds, dollar cost average in slowly).

I used to be a stock broker. But right now I am not your stock broker. This is not advice.

Great fundamental wisdom is that you can't (consistently) time the market but you should try to Buy Low, Sell High. That said, we experience a massive COVID crash. It's a great time to buy, but we don't know how long it will last or whether it will be long recession afterwards.

Index investing through ETFs is a great way to get diversity in a single financial instrument such as the S&P (large companies), NASDAQ (tech), or the Russell (small companies.) The NASDAQ has largely recovered but the Russell still has a long way to go back to February prices.

I have an old friend whose parents sold their home recently and gave him a sum. He's putting in 10% per month for the next 10 months, all in the S&P.

Key question is: When do you need the money?

Depending on time frame is the key to deciding where to put it.

How to put it, the best advise, and I am doing this myself, is to put it in a little at a time. For my needs, I have selected 8 places to put the money. Based on 3 different times to need the money. I then looked at each to determine where I thought they were going. i.e. money in emerging markets I will not put into until a year from now. Real estate and banking I am waiting to the start of summer. Others started a month ago. When I expected to be fully invested. For each I assigned now much in total I plan to put in. This gives me an amount over time to invest.

Using your 80K, assume you wanted 3 pots. Pot A is 35K, pot B is 25K and Pot C is 20K. Assume you want to put pot A 35K in over the next 6 months - assumption being you expect the bottom of that market within that time frame. 6 months is approximately 180 days - or $194 per day - $1361 per week. So I would either once a week put in $1361 or every other week $2722. In your case, I would probably do it every week.

I highly recommend vanguard.

Plan two, follow Warren Buffets advice - he said when he dies to put in 10 amount in short term government bond fund for his wife to spend every year, and the rest in a S&P 500.

https://www.investors.com/news/warren-buffett-sticks-with-tw...

Nobody can answer that seriously without knowing your situation in life. Age, family, job, etc.

https://www.schwab.com/resource-center/insights/content/does...

Just invest in a broadly diversified index fund.

Start here if you're a total beginner: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Getting_started

I dunno man I'd go for precious metals and gemstones so you can at least look at it while it collects dust. Personally I think old gold pesos are pretty cool.

https://www.apmex.com/product/1044/mexico-gold-20-pesos-rand...

You could look into investing it into crypto money. It obviously is risky, there is no doubt about that, but can yield you very good returns, even in the current crisis. There are a large variety of options depending on the risk-level you are willing to take.

If you are interested in trading, I can warmly recommend starting here: https://hackernoon.com/all-my-trusty-crypto-trading-wisdom-i...

If you don't want to go that deep, I can recommend the crypto.com app/platform, one of the most approachable options right now imo with more or less "safe" earning options for which you do not need to know anything about trading (my referral code: aenfe3qkjz): https://crypto.com/

What about: nothing, just accumulate more, stach it and one day a need or opportunity will arise.

Might not be a popular opinion since we all are expected to optimize everything but 50 years in and this non strategy has made my financial live rather dull, which I like.

What do you want? How old are you/how much career do you have left to fix a screwup? How much of a catastrophe is losing everything? Are you responsible for other people's well-being? Where are you located? How do you feel about risk? What is your housing situation?

I used a similar amount to buy a very small house in cash, but this would be considered a poor move in many ways (mortgages are pretty cheap debt). It works for me, though.

Wisdom of the crowd: https://old.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki

You decide whether to trust it. Considering your circumstances, the advice can be condensed to buying and continually investing into ETF and holding the assets for a couple of decades, as a few fellow HNers already said.

This might already be you but if not it gives some useful advice for your situation: https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/geeq4t/i_h...

I would keep 1-2 years worth of living expenses, then take the rest and put it in an index fund, and keep putting new savings into the index fund.

I would also move to a country with 1/4 the cost of living so that you're instantly 4x wealthier, and use the extra to take time off and enjoy life and build your own company.

Depending on your age and background, consider investing in yourself, e.g. invest in things that help you finish your degree or boost your career or invest in your physical health. Returns of such investments might be considerable.

I would prefer to buy property any time. People will always need housing. So while the price of the property is pure speculation, rent is a nice steady source of income.

Burn it on hookers, booze, dope, travel, education

Invest in local food and farmers.

I am building a startup, invest in me. Not kidding. No really.

If you have any debt and less than 3-6 months of emergency savings, and do not own your home, I recommend starting with a free BYU personal finance class (I can dig if you cant find a link), and/or Dave Ramsey materials.

Donate a portion of it.

Spend it on the people you love (including yourself).

Do you have any interest in building a startup yourself? If so, $80k will last you 4-5 years for bootstrapping if you move to a low cost area and don’t have any dependents or other expenses.

First, you have to ask yourself "When do I want to spend the money?"

Only then can you decide the best way to invest it.

Buy property, silver or gold.

Or - in the current climate shares in the airline industry.

/r/wallstrettbets is your friend

buy urbit stars

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Find a fiduciary financial adviser / asset manager perhaps who gets paid based on service rather than periodic commissions.

Whatever you do, don't follow the advice of posters here at HN. If even one of them has valid advice, it is coincidence.