If you had $10K to invest, what would you put it in?

I'm looking for some good investment advice.

Standard investment advice is that you should invest in a diversified mix of stocks, bonds, and money market funds. You want to buy a diversified portfolio of stocks as individual stocks are too risky. Most folks have a dificult time buying a properly balanced portfoilio of stocks on their own. They will misbalance their portfolio by buying all small stocks or all growth stocks, or some other misbalanced assortment of stocks. Unless you know what you are doing, it is best to buy 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.

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://personal.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

Check out ncinvesting.org for some great investment programs.

$10,000 is not enough to invest in real estate.

I'm in college and $5,000 was all I had when I started investing in the stock market that I earned from working at a minimum wage job. I put $2,500 into 2 different stocks.

I think at the time I bought CA:XGD, a gold index fund on the Canadian TSX index, and CA:XFN, a financials/bank index fund. Within a month I sold XGD for over $300 profit, and bought XEG, an energy index fund, and made a few hundred when I sold that too. Call it beginners luck?

I'm not suggesting you buy those now. In fact they could be considered fairly bad choices right now. I'm just telling you what I actually did in your situation.

Currently I would suggest until waiting at least to spring... you don't want to buy stocks right now. Historically speaking, there will be a bit of a Christmas rally, but then things are going to go down for all of January.

Invest in ETF: ETFs 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.
http://debts-to-wealth.com/category/Why-Invest-in-Exchange-Traded-Funds.html

hi Andrew
if u have $10k then man invest in realestate it make sence and good money returns ,,check out for realestate dealers ...

paying for your children's university

Check out ncinvesting.org, I use them and they are great.

I don't know if I would put it in the stock market at the moment. try a C.D. But if you really want to put it on something I would suggest Quest. The price per stock is currently not to high and as I look at it, it is always going up.

On the New England Patriots to win the Super Bowl!

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