What investments are right for a single, young student/pre-professional?

I'm 24, a single female and about to start graduate school for a health-related profession. After finishing school in the next two years, I plan on working/saving money for the next several years, pay off student loans and work on saving up for/purchasing some type of housing (townhouse, small house). What types of investments would be wise for me to research and consider right now?

I currently have no investments right now. I'm not sure if I should invest in something right now or wait until after school. I'm also not sure about how much to invest initially.

It depends on what you have already, and what you're investing for. Good advice I received when I was just getting started out of school was that I should not worry about investing in stocks, bonds, real estate, or other assets until I had saved 3-6 months of living expenses in a savings account or money market fund as an emergency or rainy day fund.

After that, young investors have historically done best investing in the stock market, but unless you are committed to spending the time necessary for researching individual stocks, you can get broad access to the stock market through index funds, mutual funds that mimic specific stock indices. Most of the big fund management companies offer index funds, including Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, and Fidelity, and they have historically done as well or better than most actively managed mutual funds.

Watch out for people who claim they can consistently get you market-beating returns on your money. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and if it were that good, they wouldn't be pumping it up on the Internet.

Im 29 and im an engineer. I managed to save $1,100 to invest 1,000,000 iraqi dinar. I speculate that ill become a millionaire by 2010. If you want more info go to http://www.investorsiraq.com good luck.