One of the things that will determine where your investments should go after getting the max company max is good the plan options are at your company. You may have access to institutional funds with crazy low Expense Ratios and no fund minimums, you may only have access to funds with 12-1b fees and high Expense ratios or fall somewhere in between. If you are in the first group then continuing to invest through your employer's plan can be a much better idea than if you are in the second group.
Now why should you care about Expense Ratios? (ERs) Well funds with low ERs are Index Funds and Index Funds are awesome. Index funds mimic the performance of the market and the market has an incredibly long history of going up. Low ERs are in the 0.01-0.25% range
*In walks fancy dressed "Financial Expert"*
"But I can do better!" he says. "With actively managed mutual funds I can outperform the market! Remember that correction in December. With index funds you have to eat that. I can beat that!"
Haha sure money guy. That's why you're dealing with us small fry's instead of working with Buffet or living on one of your 15 yachts. Every year 70-90% of mutual funds under perform the comparable index funds. To make matters worse they are often loaded with 12-1b fees, sales fees and high ERs (0.75-2%!)* So you are paying the guy for the pleasure of getting worse performance! Not only that but there have been a lot of lawsuits over "Financial Expert" compensation methods. Basically a lot of people earn incentive or commissions to push you into certain funds that probably don't align with your best interests. Beware the Financial Expert. He has no fiduciary duty to act in your best interests.
*The newest scam I have seen is that a lot of these funds are putting temporary "Fee waivers" in place - artificially lowering their ERs. They may have an ER of 0.25% but only after their 1% "Fee waiver" that expires in 5 months unless they choose to renew it. Read the fine print!
But which index or index tracking ETFs to buy? Well that depends on your risk tolerance. And here its really important to actually know your risk tolerance. This isn't a macho challenge about "I can stomach 100% stocks" - this is about knowing what will cause you stress and what will cause you to make bad financial decisions. Being 75/25 stocks/bonds is better than going 100% stocks and selling during a down turn. In December there were lots of threads on investment forums about people who thought they could tolerate a high stock percentage but then sold when things got tough. Don't be that guy. Pick an asset allocation you can live with.
So how to choose an asset allocation? Well there are lots of thoughts on that. Tons.
You can find a hefty chunk of that tons of information over at Bogleheads. Here is a link to some of the recommended portfolios:
https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Lazy_portfolios
And forums if you want to go down the rabbit hole (And they do provide lots of helpful, situation specific info if you ask):
https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php
But a
very rough outline is:
100% stocks till 30
75-90% stocks till 40
60-80% stocks till 50
50-65% stocks after 50
The other % should be in bonds
For the stock portion 20-40% should be in international stocks
You'll find tons of discussions about this because the answers depend on goals, risk tolerance, thoughts and impressions about the future etc etc but that should be a good starting place
Sure but a lot of people haven't gotten the point yet. I'll admit I've read it a couple of times because it helps to reset my internal financial placement after the constant bombardment of advertisement and coworkers\friends who are Under Accumulators of Wealth.