Lovelyish

I know a fair bit about investing, but because investment advice is so specific to the individual and his/her risk tolerance there is very little generic advice to give.

One bit of advice that is, however, universally true for everyone who wants more money than they have:  learn how to live on a very very (VERY) small income and then save most of your income.  Your risk tolerance and how you choose to save (savings accounts, bonds, hedge funds, stocks, etc.) will (most likely) dictate how fast your money will grow.    

Also, avoid debt .. but do I really need to say that?  I hope not.  

my advice is don’t do stocks.  a lot of people think investment = stocks but it doesn’t.  if you don’t know anything about it, look it up, ask someone, hire a financial adviser, or invest in tradeable securities that hedge risk inherently.  

yeah, i plan to stay as far away from the stock market as possible.  there’s something inherently dirty about making a profit off of imaginary products.  

When I started investing, I used a website like yahoo finance to create a portfolio of stocks I thought were wise investments. You don’t have to actually purchase the stocks to track them using real data.  I actually just checked my “practice” portfolio, if only I’d actually invested, I’d be up 43%.   Also, there is more to investing than stocks, so I recommend a balanced portfolio.

To answer your questions:1 an investment adviser isn’t necessary, but many find it useful.  
2 There are many factors to consider when evaluating an investment, and those factors vary in importance with your investment strategy.  My background in accounting favors financial analysis.  
3 very carefully 
4 I’m sure he has investments.

There’s so many ways to invest other than in stocks.   There’s bonds, real estate, baseball cards, beanie babies.  Some are riskier than others.  Although stocks is a very popular way to invest your money, I know many people who have lost a lot of money from doing it.

I highly recommend that people invest.  But diversify so if you start losing money in one thing, you won’t lose that much.

If you want to practice stocks with fake money for free, use WallStreetSurvivor.com.I love going on there and checking my stocks.  It also helped me understand how the stock market works a bit more.

The only thing I know about investing is how we had to go on this website in ninth grade and invest imaginary money in stocks.  I’m pretty sure I came out of that with way less imaginary money than I started with, so stocks probably aren’t my thing.  

Although I do also have some savings bonds and a savings account. 

please, no stocks

I know a lot about finances, particularly anything to do with accounting, since I’m in my last semester of college as an accounting major. I’m also in an international investing class right now to fulfill a CPA requirement, and we have this stock portfolio simulation. I clearly suck at it. Maybe after this class I’ll suck a little less. 

@too_pretty_to_die@xanga - You aren’t making profit off imaginary products (unless the company makes can imaginary product, maybe?). If you are investing in a company’s stock, you are giving them money to run their company and in exchange, you get a ownership stake in the company (as opposed to bonds, where you are loaning the company money in exchange for interest payments and eventually the principal (the money you loaned them) back).That means as the company grows, your slice of the pie grows. If the company does poorly, your slice of the pie shrinks. As long as company’s report their earnings in a fair manner and include all valid disclosures, all stock prices will reflect real values.

@Digital_Angel21@xanga - i’m just not interested in stocks, for a number of reasons.  one, i think the entire system is corrupt and there isn’t a single company i’d actually trust with my money.  two, my grandparents went from poverty to millions of dollars using nothing but their paychecks and savings accounts.  if they can do it, i sure can (especially since i don’t want or need that much money).  three, i don’t see investment as any different than gambling.  and i think gambling is one of the dumbest things you can do with your money.  

@Digital_Angel21@xanga - plus, i only need to look at the current economy to see how dumb it is to trust someone else to value your money as much as you do.  it’s the same reason i never plan to have a mortgage.  

@too_pretty_to_die@xanga - The stock market is a gamble, no doubt. I wasn’t arguing for or against investing in stock, just pointing out it isn’t an “imaginary” product, it’s ownership in a company. The issue you seem to pick up on without stating explicitly is investing in a company’s stock only makes sense if everything on the company’s financial statements is legitimate, something you’d only believe if you trusted a company’s board of directors, corporate officers, and the people who audit them. And honestly, I don’t blame you for not trusting most publicly traded corporations, therefore not being interested in stock. You really have to be familiar with a business, the industry, and financial reporting to pick up on the “number pulled out of our ass” stuff.

Also, the current situation with the economy was not caused by the stock market. It was caused by banks giving out loans that were high risk, trying to sell them to investors, and credit rating agencies saying to the investors they were a “sure thing” since everyone believed housing prices would continue to go up and always be a viable form of collateral. That whole system fell apart and people lost money on those investments, but they were not stock investments. Obviously, it indirectly affected the stock market adversely.

@Digital_Angel21@xanga - i’m just not a big fan of our economic system as a whole.  as you said, the recent recession was caused by a housing market crash.  in a probably too perfect world, such a thing would only affect those who bought houses.  my family all owns their homes outright, without any mortgages.  and yet, our lives were affected just as much.  maybe i’m idealistic, but it just seems ludicrous to me.

as for my mention of imaginary products, i guess it all depends on what you consider a product.  i just don’t see ownership of a company the same way i do a tangible product that serves a purpose or has a function, or even a service performed by a worker that you’d pay to receive.  not to mention, i don’t think anything is worth owning if you don’t have control over it.