best way to invest 150k?

CD rates suck right now and is pointless. Beside ING, go with Ally CD if you want decent rate with little 2month penalty for early closing.
http://www.depositaccounts.com/bl...-2012.html

Find deals for opening accounts with your money. Get a trading account at OptionsHouse, and or other brokerages that are offering opening bonus. I think Sharebuilder has a bonus when you fund it with 10-25k so open it with like $200 min and then wait for their fund it with this amount and get $200 bonus email.

Put some of your stocks in REITS as they are going strong right now. Homebuilders are doing good too. Don't buy a house if you know nothign about Real estate or being a landlord.

Quote from d0min0 : whoops i meant ING savings account at .8%. this is what i am looking into right now a little bit. does anyone know if i have to transfer all my money over to ING? dont really get how ING works if its not a physical bank that i can deposit money into. what if i have cash to deposit?

the easiest thing to do is have a local bank and just transfer money electronically between the two

Some kind of franchise restaurant maybe.

So many variables to your question. Age, risk tolerance, potential future earnings, goals, job situation, etc.

Open a savings with TIAA Direct
1.25% interest

I feel confident that the current administration will still be ruling in the next cycle. If I am correct, Gold will go through the roof. $150k in Gold could be worth $300k in a year or more. That is 85 gold 1oz bullion coins. Safe? It is a pretty safe bet it won't be coming down anytime soon.

Gold is a good way to go.

Vanguard no fee index fund.

Also make sure the rest of your finances are in order - Ramit Sethi's "I will teach you to be rich" is a good read. It's really "I will teach you how to manage and understand your money with the least amount of effort."

Don't listen to someone saying "experiment with the stock market", that really means "lose all your money in the stock market."

Listen to "financial sense", great podcasts. That should get you up to speed in a week.

AAPL and GOOG

intermediate municipal mutual fund

If you're willing to take a little risk, I'm not sure why we're talking about CDs.

Is the $150,000 extra cash for you? Do you already have 6-12 months of living expenses set aside beyond this? If not, put $20,000 (or so) into an easily accessible savings and look at investing the rest.

Should you play with individual stocks / bonds? Likely not.

Are you looking for current growth? Are the funds for retirement? Are they meant for family when you die? Do you have goals to spend the money on in the near future?

If you want to do something long term, find a good, well diversified, mutual fund and stick with it.

Dude just buy some mutual funds through vanguard. I bought one a couple weeks ago, put 3k in it and its up 4%...which equates to $120. Not a ton of money but its better than any savings account.

I have another mutual fund thats about a year old...bought through vanguard, 9k...its now worth over 11k. Up 2k in a year. Plus you get dividends each quarter which also helps.

I like you have too much money in savings right now but I'm working to lighten that load.

I'm not a pro when it comes to investing but theres so many tools/charts that show what the fund is, what it invests in, track record, morningstar ratings, expense ratios. You can even choose how much risk you want to take and it will provide you with some funds that fit that category. I dont mess with individual stocks. A lot of people do and im sure theres some serious coin to be made if you know what you're doing or what to look for. Id rather buy a fund invested in 100 different stocks. Just makes me feel more comfortable.

Quote from dealgate : I feel confident that the current administration will still be ruling in the next cycle. If I am correct, Gold will go through the roof. $150k in Gold could be worth $300k in a year or more. That is 85 gold 1oz bullion coins. Safe? It is a pretty safe bet it won't be coming down anytime soon.

I feel confident it's going to keep doing what it's been doing mostly because that's what it does regardless of which puppet they put in there as suckwad in chief. Having said that, I'd love to see a bit higher low and it some serious stops run to shake out any weak hands before it continues on it's way.

Would I go "all in?" Absolutely not, but if the people behind the scenes finally declare gold = cash as a Tier 1 asset, then I think it's absolute curtains for the dollar - and by extension all dollar-denominated investments. Gold is not a dollar-denominated investment.

OP - I think you need to determine the best allocation of that cash that allow you to sleep well enough at night that if *something* happens, not all of it is taken with it. Unless you have an iron gut, spread some risk and have physical cash on hand for who knows what.

If you want to venture into something more risky than CDs and US Treasury securities, look at the volatility in the long term:

Here's how $10,000 invested in Jan. 1981 grew when invested in the Vanguard S&P 500 fund or the Vanguard GNMA fund (GNMA essentially represents bond market, but I didn't have bond market information that far back):



But that graph hides some of the volatility. Here's how those funds varied in share price:



Notice the occasional 50% drops in stocks, while the GNMA share price has varied only about 10%.

And while stocks have outperformed bonds in the long run, look at what happens when we change the time period so it starts in Jan 2000 instead of Jan 1981:

Index funds or go buy real estate. I prefer real estate if you find a good deal, in a good area, can rent it out, and can pay it off immediately.

Worst case, you have a paid off residency or worthless paper (index fund).


edit: Only buy real estate if you have common sense on how to repair things and can keep tabs on it. I wouldn't buy real estate in another city unless you have a buddy that can keep tabs. I'm slowly getting out of the market and buying real estate.