What is the best route for starting a long term investment?

I want to start making investments for my future at my young age...I just do not know where to start

Start at the begining. Open an account at a Credit Union (usually takes $25), and no matter what happens put some money in that account every week, month or payday. This will give you a nest egg to invest after you learn more about investing. You will be surprised how soon you will have money to invest. Start this on Monday. As it is now, you are spending the money that is your future.

start by STARTING NOW

save a percentage every paycheck, go to ing for safe decent savings rates. when you get a thousand, start a small long term balanced portfolio. then add to it regularly.

do an IRA or, if you have a 401k at work and they contribute, put in the max amount. you won't miss it

help those in need, give to help those less fortunate than you are, invest time and your resources in loving others that no one else seems to care about. those investments are eternally significant.

The stock market is particularly suited to long term investment plans, unless of course you want to become a day trader.

Anthony Robbins used to advocate a system called OPA (Outcome Focused, Purpose Driven, Action Plan) to help you reach your goals. The name was later changed to RPM.

Anyway what that meant was you first of all had an Outcome (Let us say that your outcome is to grow $10,000 into $5Million over the next 15-20 years)

Purpose Driven. This is what will make you strive towards your goal, taking all actions, and not getting discouraged. (This is the dream. What will you do when/if you had $5M. This is what will kick start your massive action plan, this is what will give you the energy, the stamina, the belief that it is all worth while)

Finally, the massive action plan. What it will take for you to reach your goal, your $5M.

Do read some books on the subject. Visit your local book store and find a book that you like and feel comfortable with.

Some of the titles I have on my bookshelf include:
One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch
How to make money in Stocks by William J. O鈥橬eil (Founder of Investor鈥檚 Business Daily)
The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J Stanley and William D Danco

Check out web sites like fool.com and yahoo finance.
Investigate trading strategies with a proven track record over 3, 5, 10, and 15 years.

Pick something that you understand, find easy to use, will help you realise your goals, and where you can take responsibility for your investments and be in full control of your capital.

Having studied many investment funds, read books, and followed the financial press, you will rarely find anyone (who has a proven track record) that will tell you exactly what stocks to buy, when to buy them, and more importantly when to sell them.

Most Mutual funds fail to beat the market average, so even if you chose Mutual Funds, there is no guarantee of success.
So what can you do? What is the best way to reach your goal of $5M balancing the amount of risk you are willing to take against the chances of reaching your goal within the next 15-20 years?

Unless you have a crystal ball, all investment systems will lose money some of the time, but a really good system will always have more 鈥楿P鈥?months than 鈥楧own鈥?months, and the 鈥楿P鈥?months will generally return more than the down months will lose.

The one system that I have seen, that has a past record, is achievable, and more importantly is easy to understand is the Stocks Monthly system.

Read my free book on retirement investing, downloadable in PDF format from my website. Click on my profile and read the info to get the site.

I'm going to assume you have little or no investment experience and not a lot of money to invest. I recommend the fund below.(Excelsior Value and Restructuring) Ticker UMBIX. You can get into this fund with $500 bucks and it has outperformed the S&P 500 nearly every year it has existed.
Should you have a lot more money the above is still not a bad choice but I would do a lot of homework. You need to identify your tolerence for risk as well as investment objectives.

There are a lot of online websites. My favorite is Bobbrinker.com because most the information there is in very plain English and most of the links on his websites are to pretty good sources of info.

ETFs are cheaper than mutual funds. ETFs have very low annual expenses, nearly 20 basis points or 0.2% less. As against this, actively managed mutual funds show average expenses exceeding 135 basis points (1.35%). This does not include the extra 2% - 5% as loads, 12(b)-1 marketing fees, transactions costs, and soft dollar expenses mutual funds, passed on to you but never informed, except in very fine print that nobody cares to read.
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