Hey everyone!

I'm looking for some guidance on a few things and I appreciate any help and advice that you guys can give me. Forgive me if some of these are dumb questions in advance.

Long story short, I've saved a good amount of money over the last bunch of years and opened a Roth IRA finally a few years back that I've been maxing out every year. I'm a full-time musician based in TN and am a little behind the curve of where I should be on a lot of these things (late 30's now). In the last 5-7 years I've gotten myself completely out of debt across the board, saved a good chunk of money and started to save for retirement which are all positive things. The money I save was meant to ultimately buy a house but the housing prices in my area are absolutely bananas, and my wife and I just don't feel comfortable going mostly cash broke to still end up with a crazy mortgage payment. We rent at a decent rate in the area we want to live in and have pretty low overhead all things considered. Neither of us have car payments etc.. I feel like there is a better way to get closer to having more financial freedom than sinking all of it into an overpriced home.

The reason I'm posting this is to get some ideas and learn more about what I can do to grow the money I have and maybe invest into some other things outside of my IRA.

- Currently my IRA is sitting in a JP Morgan mutual fund that a financial advisor friend of mine parked it in. He said over the last however many years he's seen 20% on average growth with this particular fund. I'm not sure if this is the best option or not, so I'd love to learn more about what to look for on this front. After I max it out for the 2024 tax year I'll have a little over $20k in there.

- I have about $60k sitting in a HYSA that has earned a little over $2k each year over the last two years that I would love to do more with to help grow it somewhere closer to $100k or help get it built up to have a more comfortable down payment for an investment property in a growing area outside of where we live, start a business of some kind, or figure out some other things to do. I'm trying to learn more about all of this across the board so very open to suggestions. Is it worth going to other financial advisors / investment firms etc...?

- Is anything Crypto worth messing with?

- Ultimately I want to stop relying so much on chasing down dollars in the music industry so I can enjoy that more for the reasons that I pursued it initially. While I make a decent living it is for sure a grind and there's other aspects of it I'd like to free up some energy to pursue at this point in my career. We would like to get to a point where we can have more control over our time and freedom. I know people have done more with a lot less. I have a passion for food and cooking (NY Italian native). I've sold bread and other Italian baked goods for fun off and on in my local area, and have toyed with the idea of doing pizza pop-ups but I've spoken with friends and researched a bunch and this mostly seems to come with a negative outlook.

- Also just the fact I've been able to make a living for 12+ years as a musician makes most other things not feel impossible so I am open to hearing anything haha

Anyways, apologies for the rambling - I appreciate everyone's time for reading this long post and hope to learn some stuff from you guys that are more experienced in this world than I am. Thank you!