I'll try to give some broad ideas here.
The first thing I recommend is considering investment time horizons. Clearly this person needs to get his money out of cash and working for him in some capacity, but what is the best route? I feel that people in their late 20s thru 30s have some interesting choices because they might have life changing decisions 'not too far' ahead, such as home ownership, marriage, parenthood,etc... every case is different and as such it is not sufficient to say 'heck you are young- go all in'.
With that in mind, if we look at the current 'plan' to invest 60% of the cash and hold 40% in reserves I would actually say that is overly conservative. Certainly, if you add up all of these occuring:
Want to keep roughly $40,000 liquid to:
> buy used car for cash
> possibly go on extended trip abroad if no suitable work is found by Nov. 1
> set up apartment if suitable work is found
> emergencies
> monthly expenses
Then we could say it might (still a stretch) come close to $40K, but many of these are conditional choices and one would exclude the other- EG setting up a new apartment and buying a car only to leave both dormant and go on vacation would be a strange move. Typically it is suggested that one holds 3-6 months of emergency fund money in reserve, which might be up to 12K. However, in this case, I can see an argument for more as he is already, in a sense, unemployed at this time. I still think $40K is high, but rather than suggest reducing it, I would keep it similar to that, but make the $60 more aggressive (time horizon permitting).
If the risk tolerance is there, I would recommend 90/10 allocations into stocks and bonds. There is a very real chance that both will drop, so you have to have the nerve to not lock in losses, but buy more as they drop - the $40K would act as a repair ratio for that. What that means is you start thinking aggressively for your investments, and if they go sour, you tighten up your habits on the spend side- IE get a cheaper car/apt/furnishings and redirect some of the $40K into fixing up the portfolio.
In terms of where to invest, there are many options. Both of the current funds have operating expenses of about .40% per year. I recently published a list of 100 ETFs that have .14% or less. These would help a little over time, but aren't earth shattering, but on an investment of $80K over 30 years at 8% (optimistically) Average return the difference between .4% and .14% is about $60K.
The tax basis of ICA should be considered. It will be taxed as capital gains, and if he plans to earn less than $36,900 in an upcoming year he could sell then and pay a zero cap gains rate, rather than 15% tax he would pay if he was to earn over that amount of salary. This might occur should he consider going back to college or traveling as a sabbatical. In short, even though the fees are a touch higher than you could pay, simply selling to buy cheaper funds isn't always the wise move.
The Roth doesn't have those issues, he could sell the TIAA funds with no capital gains tax due to the Roth's tax advantaged nature. I'd suggest he might as well do that. If target date funds really are the solution he is looking for, then swapping out that for a vanguard 2050
VFIFX would be cheaper (0.18% operating expense). Also for the Roth - if he has earned at least $5500 (which seems likely based on annual projections) then Roth funding should be completed now, there is no need to wait and it can earn interest tax free from today.
In terms of investments, target date is a simple route, it isn't one I love, but if you don't want to deal with rebalancing then it is fine. I would tend to advise someone to drift the date beyond their actual retirement date - IE if you plan to hit retirement age in 2050 I would be invested in a 2060 plan today, it simply means that the shift from stocks to bonds is slower, and with bonds as they are now, that seems a better move.
A simple 90/10 investment split might be:
Stocks (6/6*90%)
VTSAX (total US stock market fund) (3/6)
VGSLX (REIT for higher income) (1/6)
VISGX (small caps - higher volatility/higher returns) (1/6)
VWILX (international growth fund) (1/6)
Bonds (6/6*10%)
VBISX (short term bond fund) (6/6)
Personally I might be inclined to add more tilts (Consider the
bolded funds 'tilts' as they put more weight onto stocks that VTSAX already holds) but that requires more management, so this is a little more simplistic, yet still offers opportunities for upside.
Without really understanding risk tolerance it is very hard to actually recommend this to an individual - I can recommend it to an age group, but that isn't fair to the OP. As such, take it as an illustration and with a pinch of salt. There really are many different ways to put this together, and this is just a simplified example of one.
Lastly, don't get lazy with the $40K in cash - it is likely not all is needed now, you can get 0.9% from Ally Savings right now, and maybe a bit more from other sources, that can be worth over $300 in easy money over keeping it in a Citi/Chase savings account.
