@paul_ernst

I managed to save close to 100K over the last 4-5 years. No idea what to do with it though. I work in tech, been focusing mainly on increasing my salary and now I believe it's time to start doing something with the fruits of my labor. Where do I start? How can I invest/spend it? I don't own a house, just a car. Any help, advice or links much appreciated.

After you pay off any outstanding debts you might have take a few minutes to look up your area's credit unions. That's assuming that you live in the US. Pick two credit unions, making sure one of the credit unions you choose offers business account support. Don't open a business account, but choose a credit union that offers what you see to be solid business support. Take that $100K, split it in half, open an account with one credit union with a deposit of $50k, and then open an account with a different credit union with the other $50k.

While the money is sitting there, use your idle time to make a list of the things that you want to do that you've been putting off for work, school, family, or whatever. Don't concern yourself with how silly the idea might be, just write the list out. Then when you've finished making your list, take another sheet of paper and re-write the list in order from simplest item from the first list, down to the most difficult and time consuming. When you've finished the second list, get started tackling the items on that list one by one.

When you've completed half of the list, log-in to trp and reach out to us again. By then, if you still have questions as far as what you should then do with your savings, you should have achieved experiences that influence and inform the direction you'd like to use those funds all your own, rather than have to read random suggestions made by a bunch of guys who don't know you from a hole in the wall. In that situation, we could then recommend books you could use to guide you in achieving those future goals. Best of luck to you.

@RedPirate751 @paul_ernst

real estate is probably the best investment you can make. It also lets you get away from spending on rent each month.

Right now, Commercial Real Estate is probably the WORST place to invest! CRE is crashing all over and in many places will never bounce back with remote work and technology changes. Converting to other uses like residential as so many suggest takes deep, deep pockets and is hard to turn a profit.

It's hard to get access to deeply discounted residential real estate. Many special interests have the most plum properties coming on the foreclosure and BK markets firewalled off till they cherry pick the best for themselves. Prices are probably going to crash like during the last 2 downturns, so if you pay retail over the next year you will probably lose a lot of value. You only want to buy "retail" in the dip. You'll have to do a lot of research and work to move up the food chain in the various discount channels.

If you want to get into RE look at tax sales usually County by County. Vacant land can be hard to resell especially in hard times though. Developed land that makes it to these auction blocks is usually fit only for knock-down.

Insurance prices are skyrocketing in many areas and insurers are pulling out of entire regions, another HODLing cost to keep in mind.

@Jzekyll How many approaches do you do on average in a week? It's totally ok if that happens. It's good that you observe it. Like learning to play the guitar or to drive a car, there's a good awkward stage that is not smooth or spontaneous at all, and to focus relentlessly on making it smooth and spontaneous and relaxed should never be the first goal. I'm a reasonably good guitar player today, and still every time I learn a new picking pattern it takes me days of taking it very very slow and awkward and not sounding like anything good at all. Keep talking to girls. Jep you'll need to creep a lot of girls out before becoming the relaxed player that can strike a casual conversation anywhere anytime. And every girl wants to run into a guy like that, but no girl wants to know what it takes to become one. Incremental improvements my guy. Keep crunching those approach numbers, they are by far the number one measure of growth and success.