What is the cheapest way to invest in the stock market or mutual funds?

Generally speaking, there is no such thing as cheapest way to invest in stocks.

You need to have plenty of fluff and lot of knowledge to really make it in the stock market

usually banks will not charge any fees for investing

Rob & invest or from your savings.

If your objective is to start investing some extra money, then good for you! You're already ahead of the curve!

Just remember, the safest and often highest yielding investment is to pay off any consumer debt you may have (i.e., credit cards).

Aside from that, there are several methods to get started investing in the stock market or mutual funds. The key here is diversification - the more variety you have in your portfolio, the less risky it becomes while still giving a high rate of return. That makes mutual funds and exchange trade funds top notch investments in the bang for the buck category.

Method 1. Contact a no-load mutual fund company and ask them to send you an application. You can invest in their funds directly through them at very low cost. A good example of this type of strategy would be to go through Vanguard, who specialize in low-cost, diversified mutual funds.

Method 2. Start a sharebuilder account. Sharebuilder.com allows you to buy stocks once a month automatically for as little as $4 a trade. This can be used to buy exchange trade funds as well as individual stocks, making diversification cheap and easy. The drawback is that you can only buy or sell on a particular day of the month without additonal fees. But for the long-term investor, that isn't a problem.

Method 3. Lowtrades.com. This is for the active trader who expects to do a lot of jumping around from investment to investment. They have some of the lowest fees of any brokerage. If you are very active, it can go as low as $2.99 a trade.

if u buy and hold for 5 years+

1.) QQQDIRECT.COM -- free monthly for Nasdaq 100

2.) Equiserve.com -- buy your favorite companies free of charge

if u like trade more often, firsttrade.com is u best bet $6.99/trade with no charges