If you are young - do NOT pay down mortgage - keep it out and interest-only, or minimum payment. PM me on this and I'll give you the reasons.
Invest in what you know
Invest in a combination of items - funds can be diversified into equities (dividend paying, foreign, tech, etc) or Bonds (munis, junk, government, mortgage-backed, etc) and REITs, which many include under equity.
Then you have your home -already done. There are state tax-deferred higher education funds, then direct investment into other state and government securities.
If you have the $$ then get a long-time friend in business, and ask him/her for a financial advisor referral. We cannot do this on SDN - nor should you ask us.
I only invest in other arenas where I have a 5-10yr or family relationship. I stay away from other MDs on this. We don't know jack
HTD said:
"Outside of retirement" is my next goal. Since 1993 for my wife and 1997 for I we have been putting away pre tax retirement dollars (in modest amounts) in to mutuals. We left training and entered practice in 2003 and 2005. Since then, we have had the ability to to put 60K pre tax per year and we have only been able to do that for 2 years. We are soon approaching the (outside of retirement) category.
We have some very real delimas. We have large debt that we are paying down at about a 10 year pace. That debt includes school loans for us both and mortgage. We also have three children. We are very reasonable with our lifestyle but we do have some luxuries. Bottom line, we live below our means. Our debt, howver, takes up a godd bit of would be (outside of retirement) investing. I am open to suggestions.
At this point, My outside of retirement investing is limited to two items. I consider these my "no skills" non-essential investments. In other words, I dont use money I cant afford to lose here.
1. $250/month to a Scottrade account that I occasionally buy stocks with.
2. $1500-2000/year to an investment club. Also stock investments.