Investopedia

If you are a young investor like me, and you are interested in learning about investing, www.investopedia.com is a great place to start. It's a great website that teaches you about investing (obviously), with a cool game that I will talk about later.

Having an IRA like we do is great, but it's for the long haul. I chose to go with an IRA rather than a Roth since we were rolling it over from a 401K. We have it through Chase Bank, where we do all of our banking. I go online to look at it periodically, and it's doing fine, even in a down market. I'm in a pretty high risk account (Investor Growth Fund) but we're young, so we have time on our hands, to outweigh the risk. It's managed by one of the industry's top fund managers, JP Morgan. We're quite happy with the funds that we've chosen, and they are doing a fine job at managing the account. But, they're kinda boring. Slow and monotonous.

We also have a 529 plan set up for Madalyn for college savings. It is through Bright Directions, an Illinois approved plan. Again, it's doing well, it's also age-based (she's only 15 months) it's volatile, but again, we have time to outweigh inherent risk. It's also kinda boring to watch, a necessity nonetheless. Also, a little added here ant there adds up tremendously due to compound interest. The earlier you start, the better.

Since my job is with the U of I, I also pay into SURS (State University Retirement System). About 7% of my gross income goes into this program. I believe this program is in lieu of social (in)security. It's also doing well, but I'm not able to manage these funds, since I signed up for the traditional package, not the self-funded one (an oversight on my part, but it's not able to be changed at this point, so I have to live with it. I wasn't as financial savvy two years ago when I had to make the decision). Again, another uneventful, but necessary evil.

This brings me to our other account, our mutual funds that we hold with Fidelity. I've been very happy with Fidelity. It's our elected investment account. Only 1% of gross goes into this account, and I have liberty to pick and choose how we want to invest this money, hence the reason that I'm reading books and searching on line how to use them wisely. Individual stocks really interest me. Obviously mutual funds are much safer, but if you have a high-risk tolerance, are slow to be emotional about money and research, research, research, stocks might be a good alternative for you. The old adage, "buy and hold" is just not sensible anymore. Jim Cramer tells us to "buy and homework." If you look at up and coming companies (IPOs), there are some awesome potential. I can't tell anyone what companies to invest in on this website (it's not ethical), but there are some neat companies with long term potential. Look at companies that are going green: water desalination or energy, or companies with big mergers coming up. I find it terribly intriguing.

This is where the stock simulator on www.investopedia.com comes into play. They give you 100k fake money to invest in the up to date, real time market. You can research things and see how you would do. If you want to day trade, you can try your luck. You can test the waters in a lot of different ways. With 1ook, I have made about $3,000 with the investments that I've chosen for myself so far. Not bad for a month's work (I started mid to late January).

If you find investing interesting, this might be a good place to start. There is unending info on the web. Take things with a grain of salt though. Make sure that the author has pure motives and isn't steering your towards something that he has a vested interest in (ie, he's been paid by a company to represent their shares!)