If you are going with equities, and if you don't need the money for anything in particular, I would strongly consider the prior posters' advice about putting this in a tax-deferred retirement account, like your employer's 401k or an IRA. Or if your tax bracket is good this year, a roth IRA/401k (if eligible).

Once you have the baby, financial priorities will shift for a while - 529, day care, life insurance. You'll be glad you put something away for retirement when you could.

You may not be able to put THIS money in the account, just because of the way it is paid out and the timing, but you can over-withhold on salary later to stick 10k in one.

Anonymous wrote:Can I ask an ignorant question? What careers or jobs get sign on bonuses?

Part of it also depends on what you are giving up by signing on.

If we want to hire somebody at, say a 10% increase in salary, we probably need to make them whole on bonus that they are walking away from. For us, this is a hard time of year to hire because people see their EOY number in site so we normally pay a little more. The numbers can be pretty big, even for a project level person.

Anonymous wrote:Can I ask an ignorant question? What careers or jobs get sign on bonuses?

Not OP but a wide range. Most IT jobs do. Amazon for instance routinely offers $50 to $100k in stock as a sign on (with a vesting period). Pretty much any finance job also offers a bonus. Most any professional job at a Fortune 500. Sometimes you have to ask for it, sometimes they proactively offer it.

Can I ask an ignorant question? What careers or jobs get sign on bonuses?