Might be a bit behind in thinking about this, but all these years it’s been all work-work-work and less thinking about being smart with my money. Most of my money sits in a HYSA and I realize need to do better.

What are some of the things you have done that you’d recommend / advise other folks - investment management, angel investing, tax advisors, trusts, side hustles etc. Very curious to hear learnings from this group!

I’ll take a stance contrary to using an advisor. They typically charge you a percentage of AUM and statistically they don’t beat the market over a long time horizon.

Just spread out across 5-6 mutual funds at a low load provider (eg Vanguard). Get exposure to a variety of segments - maybe 20% each to a small cap, mid cap, large cap, international, tax advantaged bond fund, and a sector fund (health, reit, energy, etc).

This is the set it and forget it approach and your timeline is long enough that you’d end up paying serious fees to an advisor over your lifetime; unnecessarily in my opinion. Rebalance back to 20% in each fund, once per year. Dollar cost average by investing surplus every month. Done and done.

I'll offer some thoughts. How comfortable are you with financial planning and selecting your own investments? If the answer is "not very", then you may want to consider some advisor help.

To frame your choices, a place to start is your time horizon. When will you need the money? That's a factor in asset allocation, liquidity needs and risk tolerance. The closer one gets to retirement, the more one weights capital preservation and high liquidity. That's where I am at the moment.

Best of luck - you got this!

Net of inflation, HYS is not very HY - so you can definitely feel good about taking the decision to find other investment vehicles

Few factors to consider are
1. Time horizon to retirement and major milestones for big spend along the way like paying for college, paying off high interest mortgage if it etc. The longer you have - the more risk you can take
2. Tax optimization - there is limited value in earning if you are paying a good bit of your returns in tax
3. DIY or wealth manager - I advise considering a wealth manager. They will help model your future objectively and will typically have many more private options for investment than you will have in DIY mode

It wouldn't hurt to take some time to read and learn about investment in general before you hire a wealth manager. You will have a much richer interaction if you have a basic idea of the core principles

OP, you're quite welcome. I didn't grow up in money either - quite the opposite, in fact. Re investment advisors, I'd say several things are key. You have to understand their compensation scheme and what you're getting for it. Most are percent AUM or some variant of fee-based. They should be able to explain the value they offer in plain language, not aspirational gibberish. If you know their incentives, then you know why they recommend one thing vs another.

MP1 is spot on with the tax advice. For a partner in this field, assuming you don’t have a lot of time for anything other than passive income on the side, I look at 5 major components of my investment strategy; pension, deferred income, UIL, retirement savings (401k, personal savings, etc.), and real estate. UIL and deferred income are the best tax vehicles you have if done correctly, and you can use those funds earlier in your retirement to let everything else keep growing. Accumulate real estate (personal and investment) when you have the cash flow and downsize when you retire for cash plus pocket/invest any additional equity. If you lay a tax-advantaged strategy next to a typical 4% withdrawal a year with long-term cap gains you will see a massive difference in cash flow. Definitely worth having an advisor to help set all of this up.

For me, biggest tip is to keep it simple. The market is at least fairly efficient overall so you’re not going to miss out on some crazy deal, even if it seems that way in retrospect.

Advisors who charge a % are super expensive, because that comes straight off your expected returns. So 1% is probably 25% of your returns. But maybe that’s worth it for you given where you are and the bull run you missed. I can see it being very difficult to get in now without feeling regret. At least with an advisor you don’t own the decision.

Note there are advisors you pay hourly as well. Way better value but less hand holding.

In addition to above avenues - index funds, mutual funds, sector/geographic ETFs, retirement, real estate etc., do you allocate a small % to “zero or to the moon” investments? E.g., 5% for angel investing, crypto bet (or whatever the next one is), etc. or generally keep to more traditional methods..

Do not pay someone. Just VOO and chill. That’s all you need