I have $140,000 that I want to invest long term?

where and what to invest in?

If you talk to any man/woman who has made their millions the one thing I think you will find that they all have in common is that they all maintained full control over their finances. They all managed their own money. Lets face it, if you're working for someone else, your putting money in their pocket while you struggle to make it on your own. And if that's the case then you probably won't mind paying someone else to hold onto your money. If you hire a financial advisor or rely on a stock broker to manage your funds, you had better be amongst the bigger dogs in the pack or you will be on the bottom of the call list when the market takes a dip or peaks and gaps back down. Chances are unless you have multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest, brokers or financial planners aren't going to go the long haul looking after you.

The first thing I recommend is educating yourself in the market. Investools http://investools.com offers a great program to teach you the basics of stock investing. It is a web-based tutorial that allows you to move forward at your own pace on your own time. After stock basics you can move onto learning about option trading. This is where I am now. I love it! Option trading allows you to make greater gains with less at risk if you do it right. They will set you up with a $100,000.00 or more paper money trading account you can use to practice trading and strategies with. They have trading message boards and web-inars to further your experiences. There is a whole list of advantages I could list but it is better to experience it on your own. The website will give you information on the free seminars coming to your area in the near future. After the seminar they set you up to go through an all day, two day workshop to boost you on your way. They assign you a trading coach to help you in your educated decision making process and offer excellent technical support. You would easily spend three times the amount of time and money for a formal education and still not have available to you the web-based tools that Investools offers through their web-site and program. The best part about it is that you can take a friend or family member with you to the seminar and through the program at no extra cost.

You should invest in stocks, bonds, and money market funds. You want to buy a diversified portfolio of stocks, as individual stocks are too risky. For most folks this means buying mutual funds. I like Vanguard.com, other people like Fidelity, TIAA-CREF, and DFA. Buy no-load, low cost funds. If you are like most people you will invest part of your money aggressively in stock funds, and part conservatively in money market funds and bond funds. Vanguard.com has an on-line questionnaire which will give you an idea of how to do "Asset Allocation," determining how much to put in each type of fund.

If your company offers a 401K plan at work, try to invest the most you can. The money grows tax free, and some companies will match your contribution. Investing in a mutual fund IRA is also a good idea. If you have children, you may want to consider a 529 plan or other college savings plan that grows tax free.

I like index funds. Because of their broad diversification, you are less likely to have a dramatic drop in value. They also have the lowest expenses. For stock funds, I would suggest putting ~70-80% of your money in the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund. and ~20-30% in a foreign stock index fund. However, there are many different opinions out there on what the best mutual funds are. Read the links below and form your own opinion

Buying a house instead of renting will save you a lot of money in the long run. You don't have to pay rent and you build equity in your house instead. Buying rental property can also be a good investment. However, being a landlord can be hard work, and many people are not good at it. If you don't know how to handle deadbeat renters, you can have trouble.

If you have high-interest debt, like credit cards, it is best to pay this off first before trying most of the investment ideas above. You should also have 3-6 months of salary saved up as an emergency fund in a bank or money market fund before trying more risky investments.

Believing advice you get on Yahoo answers can be risky, so read these websites for further information. If you find it too confusing, contact a professional financial advisor. They will charge you significant commissions, however.

Sources:

http://www.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/planningeducation
http://www.fool.com/school.htm
http://sec.gov/investor/pubs/assetallocation.htm
http://www.diehards.org/readsites.htm
http://finance.yahoo.com/education/begin_investing
http://finance.yahoo.com/funds/basics

Asset Allocation Calculators
(Determining how much to put in stocks and how much into bonds and money markets is a personal decision depending on your financial status. These Asset Allocation questionaires give you a rough idea how to do this. I like Vanguard best, but try some of the other sites as well.)
https://flagship.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsInvQuestionnaire?cbdInitTransUrl=https%3A//flagship.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/planningeducation/education
https://ais2.tiaa-cref.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects.exe/DTAssetAlcEval
http://www.ifa.com/SurveyNET/index.aspx

Web forum: http://www.diehards.org/
(Many investment web forums are overrun by scam artists. This one seems the most legitimate site.)

529 plans: http://www.savingforcollege.com

ETF's are cheaper than mutual funds. ETFs have very low annual expenses, nearly 20 basis points or 0.2% less. As against this, actively managed mutual funds show average expenses exceeding 135 basis points (1.35%). This does not include the extra 2% - 5% as loads, 12(b)-1 marketing fees, transactions costs, and soft dollar expenses mutual funds, passed on to you but never informed, except in very fine print that nobody cares to read.

It depends on your situation, including age, estimated retirement, debt level risk tolerance, tax bracket, and the rest of your portfolio. There's not enough information here to answer that question.

Either seek out a qualified trusted financial planner (and lots of people CALL themselves financial planners when they have THEIR best interests at heart), or learn how to figure out financial planning investing on your own. In either case, I recommend you park that money in something safe like a CD (or nested CD) or U.S. treasury bills while you try to figure it out.

P.S. While I agree with Joe's answer recommending a diversified portfolio of stocks, if you're not up-to-speed on the stock market, and how to invest, which stocks to buy at what price etc., I still recommend parking the $$$ somewhere safe while you get up to speed.

Buy a full, or part of, a proven franchise like a Macdonald's or a subway. If you have time on your hands open a few internet businesses. if you don't have much time on your hands, wait 1 year and buy a few houses when the market bottoms out and all the people that lost their homes are looking for a place to rent.

These activities should pay alot more then the usual 6 or 7 percent of the stock market or 4-5 percent appreciation on a home.

I don't think I would take any advice on Yahoo Answers when it comes to investing..Go see a finiancial planner in person..

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