So everyone is thinking investments. They're skipping over basic step one stuff which I don't know if you've done or not.

Step 0: Pay off unsecured debt. You said you're not really savvy with this stuff so I'm going to define unsecured debt as debt that you couldn't pay off by selling the thing the debt is for. A mortgage isn't unsecured. A car loan isn't (as long as you're not upside down because you bought a new car, or your house lost value). If you have credit card debt, student loans, any of that stuff, pay it off. Some people will disagree with this because they think that if you're paying 8 percent interest on a credit card, but going to see a 15 percent return on an investment, that you should take the higher return investment. To me, this ignores cash flow, which is more important than a small difference in return on investment. First, that credit cad interest rate is guaranteed to be that rate or worse, and your investment is not guaranteed to do a damn thing. So to argue that an ROI is higher and so that should be the only consideration is naive. Second, if you pay off a debt, you no longer have a minimum payment on that debt. This allows you a great amount of flexibility in how you spend your money otherwise. I find this to be valuable in an intangible way.

Step 1: Save cash in an emergency fund. It should be as much as you're comfortable with. Generally that's said to be about six months of salary or living expenses. So take all your outflows for the month, multiply times six, add 10% for what you're forgetting, then put that amount of cash away. If you can do this, and you have no debt already because of step 0, you are infinitely richer than almost everyone you know or see every day. This is money you can quit your job with and take your time to look. This is a security blanket. This is freedom money. Honestly, if you've done this already, and you have any money left over, you've left the realm of 'not a lot of money' for most people.

Step 2: Pretty much anything else you want to do with your money after paying off debt and saving is based on risk aversion.

You retiring tomorrow, or forty years from now? If tomorrow, save it. You won't see a return on it. If forty years from now, you can tolerate risk. Sequence of returns has lot to do with your final payout, you should read about that. That's basically the thing that the stock brokers aren't going to tell you. Sequence of returns doesn't affect their bottom line, but it does yours.

If you can tolerate the loss and eventual rebound, an index is less risky than you can probably tolerate and you could look at smaller investments that a broker can walk you through. But they're guessing just like anybody else. You very well could lose everything you give them. Just accept that if you're going uber risky. Think of the money as gone and everything else is a happy surprise.

But if you index it, you're looking at the standard 11% overall return.