I'm sure we've heard it all before, but I wanna retire early!!!! I've maxed out my 401k at work (pretax) and get close to maxing out a Roth IRA through my bank. I have only student loans as debt (which could be paid off if I weren't such a wimp about taking large sums out of my bank account, an issue perhaps best left for another question). On top of that, I've got a little over 6 months salary sitting in the bank account so I'd like to do some other things with it. Been (mostly) burned before buying individual stocks (again through my bank) and decided to give ETFs a try.
One assumption I had was purchasing an ETF through a broker (not part of an IRA or 401k plan) is totally fine as far as IRS tax contribution limits (like purchasing stock). Is this correct?
Also, I've read about advice to continuously purchase shares to dollar cost average, which makes sense but if I'm doing purchases on my one I would think I'd get slammed with the broker fee each transaction (I suppose the frequency of purchasing and the amount invested could counter this, but I don't think I have THAT much money to play with). Are ETFs worth purchasing if I can not dollar cost average? (I purchased roughly $1000 worth if that helps). Or is there a way to actually dollar cost average outside of a retirement account?
Also the Certificate of Deposit rates seems to be terrible at my bank, but is that a better investment for extra money laying around? (say purchase a 1, 2, and 3 year and just let it keep rolling).
Sorry for so many questions at once, and I know there are a TON of "what should I do with my money" type questions, but I couldn't find any quite related.