Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

$200k in an IRA, unallocated. What's the safest investment?
if you don't intent to touch the money for 10 years or longer, then dumping 100% into a low-expense-ratio index fund seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. it is simple, low maintenance and fairly mindless. just remember to reinvest the dividends occasionally (e.g. every 6 months).  however, if you are the kind of person who is going to lose their nerve when the market goes down 30%, then putting some of your money into a bond index fund or even a treasury note fund would be better than selling stock in a down market. just figure out how much of your portfolio you are comfortable losing, and put that in stocks.  then put the rest in some stable value fund and watch it's value get slowly washed away by inflation while your stock investments rise through violent swings.