(MONEY Magazine) – Nearly as long as she can remember, Louise Weizer, 36, has wanted to take exotic vacations and to live in a home built to her own design. To achieve both goals, she worked 70 to 80 hours a week for nearly 10 years, supplementing her $50,000 salary as a nurse-anesthetist for a group of physicians in Elyria, Ohio with roughly $25,000 a year from moonlighting at hospitals. The hard work has enabled her to tour more than a dozen countries over the past five years and to build a 12-room dream ranch house in the Akron suburb of Macedonia. But last October, Weizer, fed up with her long working hours, quit her job, gave up moonlighting and signed on with another medical group that requires her to work only 40 hours a week for $55,000 a year. In October she will receive $90,000 from her former employers' profit- sharing plan. Weizer, who is single, is unsure about what to do with the payment. ''I know only that I want to save the money for retirement,'' she says. Fortunately, Weizer can well afford to set aside the money. Besides her home, she owns two building lots, worth $37,000, in Horseshoe Bay on Lake LBJ, near Austin. In addition, Weizer has a tax-sheltered annuity with a current cash value of $21,000 and a $4,500 Individual Retirement Account invested in two bank certificates of deposit, earning 8% and 11% respectively. She also has $4,500 in a NOW checking account and another $450 in Dreyfus Money-Market Series Fund, recently yielding 6.1%. Weizer is best advised to roll the $90,000 over into an IRA within 60 days of receiving the money, says Don Underwood, head of retirement planning for Merrill Lynch. If she elected instead to take the distribution, she would have to pay taxes and early-withdrawal penalties totaling $43,228. For maximum flexibility, Weizer should open a self-directed IRA at, say, a discount brokerage so that she can select and switch investments with the same ease as she would have in any other brokerage account. In putting together a long-term growth strategy for Weizer, financial planners consulted by Money stress her need for diversification as well as the kind of skilled management offered by top-performing mutual funds. The planners suggest that she put $36,000 into at least two growth and income funds that have done well in both up and down markets. Richard Wagener, president of Financial First Advisors in Columbia, Md., recommends Strong Total Return (1% load; 800-368-3863), up 245% over the past five years. Kathleen Muldoon of Carter Financial Management in Dallas likes Evergreen Total Return (no load; 800-262-4471), up 240% in the same period. Wagener would allocate $20,000 to a long-term income-oriented fund, such as Kemper High Yield (5.5% load; 800-621-1048), which invests mostly in corporate junk bonds and gave investors a total return of 70.4% over the past three years.

An inflation hedge Both Wagener and Muldoon also advise Weizer to put about $20,000 into specialty stock funds. As an inflation hedge, she might invest $5,000 in Vanguard Special Portfolio-Energy (no load; 800-662-7447), up 49% over the past year. Another $5,000 might go into a precious-metals fund such as Van Eck Gold Resources (7.5% load; 800-221-2220, 212-687-5200 in New York City), which buys only North American gold-mining shares, up 138% in the past year. The planners recommend that she put $10,000 into a global fund. Wagener favors Putnam International Equities (8.5% load; 800-225-1581, 617-292-1000 in Massachusetts), one of the few global funds that is more than 10 years old. It has risen 647% in the past decade. To round out Weizer's exposure to a variety of investment markets, the remaining money -- some $14,000 -- should go into real estate via limited partnerships. In particular, Muldoon recommends Murray Income Properties II (8% load; Murray Securities Corp., 5520 LBJ Freeway, Dallas, Texas 75240), which currently yields 7% a year, and August IV Growth Fund (10% load; August Financial Corp., 3545 Long Beach Blvd., Long Beach, Calif. 90801), yielding 7%. Finally, the planners suggest a painless way for Weizer to raise money for any trips she might want to take this year. She should file a new W-4 tax withholding form at work and claim additional exemptions. If she doesn't, she will end up having $14,838 withheld, about $4,300 more than her estimated . federal tax bill for 1987. Among the trips Weizer is considering: India, the North or South Pole, and a week with anthropologists observing gorillas in Rwanda.

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