Best place for a sizeable stash of cash?

[FIREd_up!]

The closing on my house is in less than a week now (yay!). For months I've mentally planned what I'll do with the money.

1) Pay off my only credit card (mostly legal fees from my recent divorce. Money well spent).
2) Pay off my car (another crappy decision he made that I'm still paying for).
3) Set up an emergency fund, likely in an online savings account.

I will then be 100% debt free! After that I should still have a stash of around 50k. My first thought is to invest it in my Vanguard Index Funds but I'm very new to the FIRE concept and would love suggestions if anyone thinks of something better that should be done. Where would you invest a stash of cash?

Additional details: I'm currently renting for a year until I figure out what direction my new life will go. I would potentially buy a house in the next 1-2 years and would likely use some/most of that stash as a down payment so I need to have access to it within a few years.

[rubybeth]

Have you already maxed out any retirement accounts for the year? If not, there's still time to pump up 401k or HSA contributions, and of course, you could contribute to your IRA for 2017 right now, and then 2018 in January. Also, if you aren't maxing out retirement accounts right now, you could plan to do that in 2018 and use the cash if that would significantly lower your monthly income.

If you're already maxing out that stuff, then a taxable account with Vanguard seems the most sensible option. For an emergency fund, I like using Ally's money market account, since it comes with free checks (can be handy in case you need to make a purchase out of it).

[FIREd_up!]

I've just maxed out my contributions to my 403b ($18,500 per year) for 2018 and am excited about that. Thanks for the tip about using Ally for the emergency fund.