$25,000 to invest what should a noob do?

[cdxx]

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Thanks for the replies and insight, greatly appreciated.

I'm thinking of maybe putting:

$15,000 in stocks
$15,000 in money market
$10,000 in checking
$5,000 in poker (strictly as an investment experiment)

This is of course after doing research on all of the above. I'm 35 and married (though my wife doesn't save any money) and there's no way I can afford a home here in Los Angeles.

Thoughts?

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your split should be different. assuming that $15k is enough to last you 6 months if you lose your job, there's no reason for checking + money market to be more than that.

open an IRA, put $4k there now and $4k after Jan 1st. buy a good diversified growth stock fund. such as small cap growth, or emerging markets growth. buffalo small cap and fidelity low priced stock funds are doing rather well for me. put the rest (~$20k) into a non-retirement mutual fund account but put that into a more balanced fund, such as a blend fund or split it among some large-cap value and growth. if you want strictly stock trading money, put 5-10k into scottrade (and/or poker), and start trading. also do yourself a favor and subscribe to some financial publication, such as thestreet.com or financial times, or WSJ though that one is a bit dense. some stock picking alerts are also not a bad idea (on thestreet.com).

[sprmario]

I think this allocation is horrible... why do you need $10k in your checking account? Why not $2k in checking and the rest in a savings account in ING Direct, Emmigrant Direct or one of the other high yielding savings accounts?

Then why $15k in a money market account? You'd be better off in one of the above savings accounts than in any money market account.

If you want to be conservative, put $10k in an online savings account, $2 or 3k in checkings, $5k in poker and the rest in stocks. Break up the rest and put them in a variety of different mutal funds... a basic index fund, an international fund, an energy fund, a value fund and a bond fund (for example).

Good luck.

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$15,000 in stocks
$15,000 in money market
$10,000 in checking
$5,000 in poker (strictly as an investment experiment)
Thoughts?

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