<prompt> Human: I have an education in economics so I know the basics of savings, and recommend index funds to people who ask and have an index fund myself. However, I am aware other options may be more optimal for tax reasons. If you were to tell someone 25 years old the absolute best way to handle their money, no matter how complicated, what is it? with explanation why  <response>: no matter how complicatedThis matters because ultimately time is money. The nice thing about the kind of investments PF usually recommends is that theyre very low maintenance. Every bit of timelabor you spend researching and managing your investments is a cost that counts against potential gains.Posts like yours are fairly common. Youre basically saying yeah I know index funds are good for the masses, but whats the real secret? Unfortunately, the boring answer is the right answer here. If youre asking for people to pitch real estate, FOREX, cryptocurrency, or penny stocks to you, youre going to find people that will tell you that its a good idea and they have a method thats going to outperform the market. Theyre, by and large, wrong. You already know that.So Im going to repeat the same old boring advice: max out your tax-advantaged retirement accounts before you worry about other investments. If youre at the point where youre reliably socking away 23.5kyr maxing those accounts, you can explore a little bit, but your best bet is probably still to just buy an index fund and use your energy elsewhere. 