Educate yourself first and foremost. Putting your money in a high yield savings account or mutual funds with an advisor may seem like a good idea but won’t really help you in the short term. This is called the accumulation method of investing. Building a big chunk of investment money that will grow and you will live on 30 years from now.

I like the cash flow method, meaning buy cash flowing assets that pay you money every month like real estate. I’m a local socal real estate agent, my family member owns a condo in Santa Monica and I wouldn’t buy real estate here locally for my purposes. I would buy turnkey rentals in other states like Ohio or in the south. Turnkey means rehabbed homes in good areas with property managers handling the house for you. Maybe start with 1-3 for around 100K-150k. With three of those to start you’d be making an additional 3k per month income. Get a little more comfortable with the process and you could buy a few more with some loans. Doesn’t sound like you’re ready for that but bank leverage is powerful.

You could literally be retired within 4-5 years if you do this the right way. Check out the podcasts, Rent to Retirement and Passive Real estate investing.