FYI, my math above was broken. If you're willing to tolerate a 25% loss of your cash, and you put half your money into the market, then you can tolerate up to a 50% drop in the market.

Anyway, I'm with the crowd on Vanguard. They're all about charging you low fees. They have investment advisors who can help you out. I use Fidelity, because they do my 401(k) and other retirement stuff. Fidelity has low fees on their "Spartan" index funds, but their other stuff charges more. Big surprise. Their advisors, if you go speak to them in person, will try to sell you additional products that make them even more money rather than necessarily making *you* more money. (The one time I thought "what the heck" and scheduled a meeting, they were trying to sell me a weird variable annuity product. You lock your money into their box, they charge you a fee, and they give you a limited menu of funds, which charge more fees. In return, you save some taxes.)

Vanguard is a different beast. They offer a bunch of cheap funds that don't try to be too smart. You want to invest money internationally, right over here. You want small cap value? Over here. You pick the asset allocation you want, and they've got cheap, broad funds that do the rest.

If you were investing a lot more money for a longer time horizon, you might look into DFA (Dimensional Fund Advisors), who take this particular philosophy about as far as it can be taken. The only problem with DFA is that they don't want to deal with retail investors. You either get them through your company's 401(k) or you pony up for an investment advisor, who then charges you a management fee, just to get your money into the damn funds, canceling out much of the low-fee benefits. (Arguably, DFA does this so they can avoid lots of customers shoving money in and out, and thus they can avoid churning the underlying stocks and can keep their fees low. Still annoying.)