It depends entirely on your objectives, experience, resources, and talent. Very difficult question.
If your objective is to become a billionaire before you pass, then start learning how to invest your money now and plan to keep at it for the rest of your life. On the other hand, if you want to turn $10,000 into a decent retirement over the next 20 years, then someone else may be able to handle that for you.
Your investment options also increase with the amount of money you have to invest. Specifically, accredited investors (people with over $200,000 a year in income OR $1 million net worth, if I remember correctly) are allowed to invest in certain private equity vehicles that are illegal for people with less money to invest in. You can generally expect a much higher return from these investments.
Personally, I've been trained since birth to invest in real estate, and I know the business forwards and backwards. For the first two years after college, my objective was to increase my wealth as quickly as possible, so I invested for myself and built three companies centered on real estate. I worked on it 80-100 hours per week.
Now that I've made a substantial amount of money and don't really need to work full time anymore, I'm becoming a much more passive investor and placing the money with other sophisticated investors. I'll make less money, but I'll have a whole lot more time.
Hope that helps!
|