Your wife should get her own credit card, a starter card or a secured credit card, and build her credit with little day-to-day purchases on the card and always paying the full credit statement amount before the due date. That will build her credit score.

Meanwhile, of course put any bigger payments on the credit card that earns travel points.

As for investing, I'd open an account with Vanguard (or Fidelity or Charles Schwab) and go for their low-fee diversified index funds or ETFs. A book you could read (perhaps before doing this) is "The simple path to wealth" by JL Collins.

> I've heard a lot about how the standard "get a job, IRA and investment portfolio" won't be enough for us to retire.

Well... depends on the size of the investment portfolio, I'd say. Other things you could do is 1. keep your expenses low, don't give into lifestyle inflation 2. don't have (a lot of) kids and 3. try to take care of your health (to reduce healthcare costs in older age).

With number 1 would also come not living in a very fancy house and not driving the fanciest cars.

> Finally, I'd like to maximize my money for today, be able to make big purchases, go on vacations etc.

As Paula Pant, financial podcaster, says: You can afford anything, but not everything. Making a big purchase now means retiring later, later. So you've got to ask yourself what you really want to do and achieve on your always-limited income.