Investing All-in-One For Dummies

I don't know what kind of resources you prefer, so I have to give a broad-brush answer. And I also don't know what your state is right now -- age, net worth, debit, financial state, and so on. You might want to start by getting your financial house in order. r/personalfinance has advice about that, but the main thing is that you want to have a good emergency fund (say, three months' salary) in savings. And no to very little debit. If you don't have your emergency fund, save it up. If you have more debit than just your home, pay that off (mostly) before you start investing. Then, you're not burning money that you could be saving. r/personalfinance has a good FAQ about all that. Do you have a 401k plan at work? An ESPP? Get those going, too. Learn to "pay yourself" first -- take care of your investments before you do discretionary spending. Maybe you want to use Reddit as a resource. Getting investment advice on reddit itself is pretty iffy, because a lot of know-it-alls parrot ideas that aren't really, well, good. (This happens in all subjects on Reddit, though, so I'm sure you're used to it.) Maybe try r/bogleheads or r/investingforbeginners if you want to try. r/personalfinance is a good way to start to get your financial house in order. Maybe you like books. John Bogle was a guy who sort of invented mutual fund investing, and he has this philosophy that most individual investors can keep things super simple and do very well at it. People who believe that idea hang out at r/bogleheads, but you can read the books first hand. The Boglehead's Guide to Investing is a good first book about investing, if you're into this "keep it simple" idea. The Bogleheads also have conferences around the country, and a pretty good website of their own. Ther getting started page is pretty sold, and links to the rest of their content in a good order. The Investing for Dummies books aren't bad, if you can stomach the title, LOL. Investing for Absolute Beginners is very good. Rich Dad, Poor Dad wraps up the authors stories around investment advice and fundamentals. Maybe that kind of delivery appeals to you. The Intelligent Investor is drier and a little more technical. But you can also take action. I have been a Fidelity customer for more than 30 years, and they're great. Open an account online. You don't need any money at all to do so. Once the account is set up, fund it with $100. You can trade that $100: buy an S+P 500 index fund like VOO . This will track "the stock market" in a pretty diverse way, and you'll get your feet wet with the process. It could go down, it'll go up eventually. You'll get a small dividend every three months. Reinvest that into VOO. Your $100 will get you just 1/7th of a share: 0.177 shares. There is nothing at all wrong with this. It's great, in fact: you've gotten started!! Use this as an experiment to get comfortable. Watch the price. Learn the account features. Learn how dividends work. You don't need to meet with anybody at Fidelity, so if they start doing sales calls, ignore them. If you've got $20 or $50 extra, transfer it over and buy more VOO. You don't need to buy and sell all the time. Contribute what you can over time, let it sit there. If you make a mistake, adjust it. But you don't need to be a day trader, or a "trader" at all, really. Buy it and keep it and watch it grow up. You should think of your whole financial situation. Your debit, your investments. Your spending, your budget. Make plans about money, don't just react to it. Once you get to $2000 or $5000, start thinking about your real investing plan. By then, you should've used the other resources to get educated about it and be comfortable with the ideas. I wouldn't worry about too many details until you're at, I dunno ... $100,000 . Before that, fussing around with ration and diversity and anything else is a bit more complication than you really need. Use the time to get comfortable and smart. Fidelity also has lots of online and face-to-face education, so make sure you read up on that and take advantage of it. There are lots of path to success. Don't worry about mistakes. Focus on understanding what it is you're doing and being comfortable with it. You're not going to convert $50 into a dodici cilindri anytime soon, but if you keep up with contributing a little and make solid decisions, you'll have a wonderful retirement in 20 or 30 years, and I'll see you over in r/rich soon enough. Hope that helps. As you can see, I'm quite passionate about investment. I meet a lot of people who think investing is just gambling, so they stick with gambling because they're somehow more comfortable with it. I meet lots of people who just don't understand how to invest, are intimidated, and don't act at all.