Not a financial pro just advise-

If your job offers a 401 or anything with matching funds - do that. It's money you won't miss and what money the company matches is free money.

Start a safety cushion. This should be about 3-6 months of income to fall back on or you van tap into in case of life's Iittle mishaps. Car repairs, medical, house repairs, family emergency, job loss ect.

CD - cash deposit rates are actually worth investing right now. Over 5% returns and they are guarenteed funds. The more the government jacks up rates, the higher % CDs will be offered. They pay out a flat % over X amount of time. 3 months, 6 months, 12, 18. I wouldn't go more than 18 months as rates can can change. Most you should be alble to withdrawl the money in case of emergency. They usually pay part interest evey month so you'll still have the money in case you need to, but the amount you get will be the time invested so you wont get the full 5% for example if you pull out 6 months into a 12 month CD. You'll only gain 2.5%.

Some of them require higher starting balances than others, but most are pretty easy to get into. Take part of that cushion and make it work for you. Savings accounts offer jack squat. Not very aggressive but better than the stock market casino where even good companies are getting taken for a ride. The market right now is very broken.

If you can, save for some gold, silver, platinum to diversify. The US is going to experience some wild inflation due to it's continued war mongering and isolation of the world and it's resources. I don't think the world is going to forgive us for the whole Palestine / Ukraine thing. Look at the price of gold back in 2000 before 9/11 - $200 / ounce. It's now around $2,000 an ounce. It's a known hedge against inflation. I wish I did that earlier. Unless we get really into space mining and reach the Golden Nugget asteroid, they should continue to be a hedge. Learn about SPOT price and PREMIUMS over spot prices. If you have funds backed by physical assets there might be storage fees or maintenance fees associated eith them. Take a look at ONE GOLD and APMEX or JM BULLION.. There are others but these are some of the larger more trusted orgs for example. There are many ways to get access to these commodities.

Shop around for a good financial adviser professional tell them about your current situation and retirement goals. Be careful of higher fees. There are annual fees for these funds and percentage takes when you do withdrawl in retirement. But they can help get in diverse and larger funds and ask about Roth IRA's. (tax free withdrawls since you already paid taxes on the funds) There are usually minimums associated with certain funds.

Don't count on or put all your eggs in one basket. You're going to want to spread RISK so in case a market or sector crash or some other thing happens that royally fucks something up you won't lose all your assets in one blow.

I’m going to take a slightly different approach, although I generally agree with all of the advice here.

1. Establish an emergency fund. If you’ve been living paycheck to paycheck and do not have a significant amount of money in accessible savings, you’re taking a risk of not being able to handle something like a car repair or unemployment. Withdrawing funds from tax-advantaged retirement accounts can take time and incur significant financial penalties. The rule of thumb is to figure out what you spend in a month, and plan on an emergency fund that can carry you through 6 months of zero income. Some people do less, some do more, and if you’re really thinking about it you can figure out what expenses you can cut in order to make those savings go further.
2. Putting money into a matched 401k is a no-brainer, and going with an index fund or retirement date fund is the easiest way to go. However, realistically examine the expected savings by the time you plan to retire. This tells you how much you’ll be able to draw down and for how long. I’m going off of memory here, but I think the consensus safe draw down rate is 4% per year. That means $1M in retirement savings will give you about $40k per year to live on (not including things like social security). Depending on where and how you live, this might be sufficient. You’d have to plan for it though, which is my point.
3. There are plenty of retirement calculators online to help with this. You enter your age, when you want to retire, the amount you’re saving, and it will tell you what your savings will be when you’re 65 (or whatever) and how long it will last at different draw down rates. Some will let you estimate things like rate of return too. Be realistic.
4. Realize that the closer you get to retirement, the more conservative your investments should be. To paint with a very broad brush, low risk=low reward, high risk=high reward. The further you are from retirement, the longer you have to recover from a downturn. Look at the retirement date targeted funds - they move over time from a more speculative set of investments to a more reliable one. What I’m saying here is that you’ll read things about being able to plan around a 10% rate of return. That’s the average for a stock based portfolio, and it can swing around quite a bit. Individual stocks have a higher risk than an s&p index fund, and the index fund will have a higher risk than a conservative, income-oriented fund. Remember that when you’re using those retirement planning web sites.

Just follow the Bogle strategy. Low fee index funds.

Do you have any debt? Outstanding credit card balances, loans, etc..

Send your extra cash to me. I'll invest it for you. No strings. My track record is as solid as FTX. You can't lose.