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[quote=Anonymous]I am sure I will get people who strongly disagree, but the answer to how do you learn is. . .  you don't.

There's actually a fair amount of research on financial literacy, and not much of it supports that knowing more significantly improves your outcomes.

If you're feeling like you'd need to read an infinite amount of material to learn how to beat the markets that's because you would. You'd need to have perfect knowledge to do it, so you shouldn't try.

Instead, you should be focused on investments that don't require either you or the investment manager to outsmart other people. You want funds that are diversified and have low fees. That's about it. It is a fairly simple strategy and its easy to research.

I do think you should talk to a financial adviser, which will require you to overcome some trust issues. But consider these two things:

1. Your financial situation is really pretty simple. The core bits of advice an advisor should be giving you should be pretty much the same across a group of people. And if you want to be sure of that fact, talk to more than one person.

2.  I feel like you'll have trouble shelling out money to an advisor, and that's ok because I think a free advisor would be ok for you to get started with. There are decent free advisors for various financial institutions who will all give you the same essential advice.

Of course, point #2 gets back to your trust issues. Before you spend your money the way your free advisor tells you to, you'll want to make sure their advise isn't biased. But often, its pretty easy to find out what makes them the most money and be skeptical of those reccomendations.  (I have an advisor I like through Northwestern Mutual but I kind of tone him out when he starts pushing Northwestern Mutual life insurance options). And anyhow, it is a lot more discrete of a research task for you to educate yourself about what your financial advisor's angle is than for you to educate yourself until you're a savy investor, isn't it?

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