RockyMcNuts

things you can do in order of complexity

1) put everything into a balanced ETF, a balanced portfolio. Or a target date fund, a one-stop fund with a particular retirement date in mind. I lean toward the ETF probably, simpler and has tax advantages.

2) robo-advisor - basically asks you some questions, spits out a balanced portfolio, does some tax optimization every year, charges between 0.25% and 0.5% annually or so ... which the tax optimization might save you. i.e. rebalance annually, but try to sell stuff when it's down to offset any taxes on things that have capital gains for any reason.

3) registered investment advisor - would typically charge 0.5%, pick ETFs and funds, maybe offer access to alternatives, have a person you can call, see quarterly or annually. Makes sense if you feel more comfortable with someone you can talk to, a good one will talk you down when the market is down 50% and you want to sell everything. There are some directories of financial advisors and lists of top advisors in your area. The DFA advisors are one breed, they build their own low cost, possibly beta-plus indexes.

4) fee only financial advisor / planner - same as 3), but charges by the hour, instead of e.g. 0.5%

Honestly the only reason to have a financial advisor is if you really implicitly trust them, their biggest value add vs. a very passive approach is you can talk to them when the market is scary, they can educate you, you can be open about all your financial goals and worries and they will work with you. They should be walking you through their asset allocation and individual investments and asking you about all your goals and priorities and risk tolerances and expectations for retirement. You should be monitoring their performance vs. an agreed benchmark, monitoring fees vs. market standards, asking questions about anything that deviates from the agreed allocation and strategy, anything that is performing poorly.

You can always take your statements to another FA and say you're thinking of switching and they will give you a second opinion.

If they are explaining things clearly, answering questions, doing what they say and not bullshitting, overtrading, overcharging, and you get along with them, no reason to overworry about them screwing you. Just watch carefully and ask questions about anything. If you are worried about them screwing you, it's a problem already. If they are hard to talk to, it's a problem. If they are trading a lot it's a problem. If they are charging high fees, it's a problem. If they are investing in anything weird it's a problem.

Ultimately you do have to educate yourself and talk to them frequently and be comfortable with your FA, if you choose to use one.

So, if I wanted to learn to build a modern web site, soup to nuts, mobile-friendly, SEO-friendly, the works, where would I start? Is there some book/tutorial/MOOC that will walk me through it?

I studied CS, have experience with all the major programming languages/paradigms, currently mostly machine learning, Python, TensorFlow, Keras. But the idea of learning Bootstrap, React, and lord knows what else is so daunting I don't even know where to start. Just feels like layers on layers, turtles all the way down. I put up simple web pages with Django but it bugs me that they are nowhere near what a professional front-end engineer would do.

https://hackernoon.com/how-it-feels-to-learn-javascript-in-2016-d3a717dd577f

was prison like Orange Is The New Black?

ever hang with the Rolling Stones or throw a TV out a hotel window?

isn't it kind of uncool to share the password to your employer's computer in a hacker forum?

play poker.

learn probability, stats, linear algebra, differential equations / dynamic sytems, machine learning, micro and macro econ and accounting and finance so you have some idea about underlying fundamentals. take the full 2-year calculus sequence. convex optimization. if your university has stuff like continuous time finance and digital signal processing / info theory those are good.