Re: Investing Poker Winnings
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I like Midas' advice. Also you didn't mention anything about credit card debt, but make sure you get rid of any of that before you start investing.
If you want to start something small right now, open a Roth IRA and invest in some long term growth mutual funds. These are to buy and hold, you don't want to be constantly trading them. You pay taxes on the money now and can invest $3,000 a year (next year the limit goes up to $4,000) and it will be tax free when you take it out during retirment. If you start this now and keep it up, your retirement account will be in the millions, see "compound interest".
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Be careful with a Roth, though. If you're playing a hell of a lot of poker and counting each winning session as a income and each losing session as a deductable loss, the Adjusted Gross Income on your taxes (which would include your wins but not include your losses) might be high enough to disqualify you from getting a Roth. There was some discussion somewhere around here about whether you would really get screwed like this, but I don't think anything intelligent came of it.
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