First time investor here looking for advise! I am currently a grad student living abroad (US citizen in Europe). I have $10k in savings that I am not touching. My husband and I pay off all of our expenses through a combination of his freelance computer engineering money, my school stipend, and money from my odd jobs here and there. I graduate in June 2018 and hopefully will land a good job after that and it seems like my husband will only continue making more as time goes on because he is learning many new skills (he is currently in an online school that teaches how to program self-driving cars).

We would like to stay in Europe after I graduate, which has its own share of challenges, but I am unsure about the kind of challenges that may arise in the investing arena. Seems like it shouldn't be a big deal, my money is in a US bank account and I pay taxes in the US still.

Our dream is to be able to buy land here so I am looking at the best way to invest in order to grow our money for the few years, take a large chuck out for the down payment and then hopefully continue paying into investments from there. I've been particularly interested in ETFs and Vanguard index funds and also platforms like Betterment (although I don't want to get into a monthly pay in platform until I have a steady job).

So I am wondering what advise would you give to me as someone who wants this $10k to turn into something more and hopefully use it to buy land within the next five years and how should I change my strategy once I am earning an income again and want to start adding to the fund. Thanks so much for the help!