Hey all. I will have $50 000 to invest within 2 years. How shall I go abouts doing it? I want an extra monthly income, but I am not sure as to how much I need to invest to recieve say $200/month. I guess a portion ($10 000) would go to retirement fund for the future. But any good ideas out there?
P.S. I am 18 years of age. Startin early
A good place for learning about investing is The Motley Fool at http://www.fool.com
A few basic pieces of advice:
Do your homework. Don’t invest based on someone else’s ‘hot tip’.
The stock market has grown by an average of 10% every year for the past 80 years (that’s including the Great Depression). It has consistently been one of the best places to invest your money.
Stocks go up and down in the short term, and even great companies will have bad years. Only invest in stocks money that you won’t need for at least 5 years. Any money you need in the short term should be invested in something safer (but with lower returns), like CDs.
Find a discount broker and do your own investing, rather than paying a full service broker $50-$100 (or more) for every trade.
Don’t trade. Invest. Don’t buy and sell on an hourly, daily, weekly, or even monthly basis. I can’t time when a stock will go up or down by an extra dollar, you can’t either, and neither can the professional brokers. The difference is that while you and I will lose money in the long run with this technique, the professional brokers will make money from all the commissions they receive with each trade.
If you don’t feel confident about your ability to chose quality stocks, invest in an index fund. These mutual funds mimic the behavior of the major indexes (S&P 500, NASDAQ, DJIA, etc.) and match their performance. In so doing, they outperform over 75% of actively managed mutual funds.
btw, starting as early as you are is an incredibly good move. The law of compound interest is your friend, and with patience and some good judgement it will treat you very well.
happy investing!
–sublight.
I am already signed up at http://www.fool.com 
But if I hadn’t it would have been an excellent suggestion. All they did for my posts was provide me with a bunch of links, that which I am grateful for, but they just dont help. Investing is like foreign ground for me, I am REALLY lost. I try to read all the info but this tingling in my tailbone makes me have to get up and I can’t read all that stuff it’s too much!