I recently inherited a big chunk of money just under $500,000. This is more money than I know what to do with so I'm looking for general advice like do's and don'ts. I'll be talking to a financial advisor at my bank too. I'm in Quebec, I'm 34 and make $56k/year. I currently rent and have no kids.

I say $400k because I'm going to be using (not spending) roughly $100k first. I'll be paying off the last of my debt, around $4000. I desperately need a car, been trying to buy one since September, but the market has been terrible and the choice was between financing a car at 5% interest or saving money. So I'm budgeting for a $10,000 used car (I'm pretty experienced at buying used cars). I also want to help out my close friend and his wife with some pretty bad house repairs that they didn't see coming and they're currently struggling with the mortgage increases and other expenses. He saved my ass more times than I can count and I really want to help him out. I'll also be putting a year's salary ($60k) into an emergency account.

After all this I should have over $400,000 left. I read that I should max out a TFSA, which I'll probably do, but not sure what to do with the rest. I've only been financially responsible for about 5 years. I was very bad with credit cards when I was younger (no one taught me any better), and I did a consumer proposal to clear my credit card debt four years ago. I'm still quite unfamiliar with TFSAs, RRSPs, and all other financial abbreviations (recently started learning and doing research) as the last four years have been spent in financial recovery and savings mode (and general restructuring of my life).

I currently have $9000 in savings which is the most money I've ever had in my account, so this $400,000 is kind of scary to me and I'm scared to blow it or invest badly. Ideally I can actually grow it into even more money with smart business/investment decisions, but two things I'm not looking to do is get into real estate, as I'm against investment properties and I don't want to deal with being a landlord anyway, and stocks. I've always been curious about the stock market, but I'm not touching that until I'm more literate.

I appreciate any advice or links to useful resources for someone in my situation.