Other than a 401k plan & IRAs, what ways of investing would be good to see your $ grow with little investment

Which investing programs should be avoided? What do people think about Sharebuilder?

Purchasing stock is more risky, but if you are investing for the long term, you should be OK. Large stocks like Disney and Cisco may have periods where they dont' increase or even decrease, but over the last ten years, they have returned 10% annual return. You could use sharebuilder to purchase 2 or 3 shares each month.

Mutual funds are the best investments for smaller amounts of money because your money is pooled with other peoples' money and then managed by professional money managers. They are safer than stocks and are easier to redeem than stocks. Plus you don't have to wait until you're 59 1/2 to touch them like an IRA or 401k.

I have a life insurance policy where I sock away extra money. I just pay a little over the premium each month.

I think you need to take a step back and assess your investing goals, and then look at the plans you have and their investing options before addressing the question you asked here.

As far as your question goes, I don't know what you mean by "see your $ grow with little investment". Do you mean having limited investment options?, limited funds? something else? A standard 401(k) plan usually involves a pre-tax contribution on your part which may be matched up to a certain percentage by your company. These plans tend to have fewer investment options than IRAs. IRAs or Individual Retirement Accounts are held by brokerages and others and generally allow you to invest the money however you want. Some IRAs hold pre-tax contributions (traditional IRA) and some hold after-tax contributions (Roth IRA). To consider investment options "Other than a 401k plans & IRAs", you would have to have a targeted investment allocation (like 80% stocks, 20% bonds) and figure out where you need to put additional money to achieve your desired breakdown. You might also want to take this one step further and say 40% large-cap (big company stocks or funds), 20% mid-cap (medium sized company stocks or funds) and 20% (small company stocks or funds) and 10% corporate bonds, 10% muncipal bonds. I could go on...

There is a lot to consider depending on your age, your desired retirement age, how much money you want to have, how much risk you are willing to take etc...