[Sbrothnj]

...unless you really havent done this before and dont have some basic ideas about investing. You will pay commissions and fees, often ongoing, for mixed results. Warren Buffet's sage advice for normal people is to put your money in a good index fund and leave it there. Few advisors, or mutual funds for that matter, actually manage to "beat the market" over the long term. I thought the advice from the first several advisors on this thread were all basic, sound and conservative approaches. If their guidance is not understandable to you, ie if you are truly novice at this, then perhaps an initial session with an advisor, or at least a continuing ed class or the like, before you do any investing, is needed. Stay with bonds, mutual funds and ETF's for broad and diversified exposure. If you want to do a bank in the interim, Synchrony Bank (online) has been offering around 2% on savings accounts. Good luck. Stay conservative. I agree that the market needs to settle out quite a bit yet. If you go in, go bit by bit.