[RT Wolf]

how old are you? There's a million and one ways to invest. I prefer value investing in stocks, which is about treating stocks like pieces of companies. Look up Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch for this sort of investing. You can read The Intelligent Investor for this type of investing, and just google around for it.

Depending on your age, your asset allocation is best when it is different. If you're looking to invest in th stock market, you have to have a 5-10 year minimum time horizon (IE need hte money in more than 5-10 years) and I recommend you invest using index funds unless you know what you're doing. Don't invest in mutual funds or your own stocks unless you know what you're doing. I suggest investing in th stock market now cause it's cheaper and keep investing.

If you're older and need the money sooner, less risk investments like bonds are a better idea.

The real key to investing is: get started (early if possible) and be regular at it. You get those two things right, you're much much more likely to be better off.

In a sense it's a zero-sum game and in another sense it isn't. The pie keeps getting bigger.

Whether you shoudl invest or not, I do think you should know the basics about investing so you can make an informed decision for yourself. Definitely learn about the magical powre of compound interest. Pick up a decent book on financial planning. Maybe "It Pays to Talk" or The Automatic Millionaire or The Wealthy Barber. Something that givse you a broad overview of the options. Keep these things in mind though: in stocks, index fund investing beats most other strategies hands down and not to invest in anything but index funds without doing your research.