When considering yield, always consider after-tax yield. Having a 6% non-tax-advantaged debt is better to pay off than a taxable 7% investment.
Here's a good "order of operations" guideline: https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/investment-...
First, no matter what you do, construct an asset mix (even if it's wrong) to start, then do research on what is most appropriate for you, stick to it, and just keep investing to each of those buckets.
I think I sit generally along the lines of:
- 60% real estate property - 10% retirement investments (401k, IRA, etc) - 10% Vanguard Index funds (diversified across 5 indices, large cap, SP500, small cap, REIT, etc) - 5% direct stock investments (moderate risk, high reward) - 8% high risk, high reward investments (e.g. seed investments) - ~2% cash (mix of checking account and HYS account @ 1.7% APY)
- 20% of my overall portfolio is basically liquid in case of an emergency
NOTE - do not strictly follow this asset mix, it's just illustrative based on what my wife and I have decided to do.
My wife and I (early 30s) have been getting her school debt settled but with little retirement outside of a small 401k, we've started looking at aggressive retirement plans.
At the moment we're just treating everything as the most yield (compounded or not). So her high interest debt is the most yield, however once half of those are out, a lot of investments will yield higher than her debt, so we'll likely shift priorities towards those.