Put it into your savings account because you need a rainy day fund.
When you have $3000 to invest, put it into Vanguard's S&P 500, and call it a day. You are already beating more than half the managed funds out there. You spend time with your kids.
This is slightly more complicated than YO, but only slightly.
Not another choice, just a simpler way to choose funds, with recommendations, etc. Wealthfront and a few others have offerings that do a pretty decent job at this, but they don't cover 401k plans, and their fees are high for something that should be set and forget. Target date funds are actually pretty good at doing this, and some have relatively low fees.
A lot of the 401k providers just dump a list of 40 funds on your lap, and let you figure it out, but it's information overload.
I really want something that can help me decide what type of risk I can handle, and then properly choose funds / balance between all of my accounts. Financial advisors are able to do this, but software can do it better and cheaper.
Basically, I want something like Mint that connects to all of my investment accounts, and sends me an email once or twice a year with specific instructions for rebalancing.
I think the app I'm working on (https://www.RetirementPlan.io) is in the right ballpark for what you are asking for. Can you try it out and provide feedback? It's free while in beta.
It's missing the Mint-style auto-connect, but it largely does the rest of it (the actual hard math).
So we are going to make another choice?
What if I only have $1000 to invest?
Put it into your savings account because you need a rainy day fund.
When you have $3000 to invest, put it into Vanguard's S&P 500, and call it a day. You are already beating more than half the managed funds out there. You spend time with your kids.
This is slightly more complicated than YO, but only slightly.