Laying groundwork

The world of finance is really confusing from outside. But really it is just human beings like you and me on the inside. They have their own flaws, notions, ideas, homogeneity, cohesion and apply to the basic nature or the general human nature. Really, it is one window or view of the state of the human society. In a way, it is just an amazing picture of the kind of things that happen in the world. It is definitely a worldly thing, a materialistic thing but then rather than dig deeply into philosophical aspect of thing, let me tell that there is nothing spiritualistic or philanthropic about such things. In the grand scheme of things, money buys time and is an essential thing is today's society. But one has to be just careful to consider the costs of acquiring and investing said money. Hence, we would discard the illegal investments even if they were to return us higher return of investments :D.

As previously said, at this point of time, we will also not pursue much on Forex and Derivatives. Both are instruments for the very very big investors with more than a billion to invest and with heavy amount of disposable liquidity like governments and agencies. So sticking to just stocks and bonds, debts, the main instruments that are available are your friendly credit unions, CDs and savings accounts, investing in real estate thru your home and rentals, stocks, bonds thru brokerages and mutual fund companies. It is imperative to have some sort of accounts with the Vanguards, Schwab or TD Ameritrades. Many offer to trade their own ETFs or mutual funds for free. Have some accounts opened under your name for the IRAs - Traditional and Roth; 401ks, Simple IRAs, Rollover IRAs as soon as you leave your job to the next one, 529s, HSAs and general taxable accounts. Now all the big hitters or rather the funds that you think will appreciate well such as REITs, stocks etc will stay in tax-advantaged accounts such as IRAs while the slow growers stay in taxable account. That way you are not holding off a big bill come tax time.

So don't overthink such things, just open some accounts. Practice with some play money and maybe put 5000 USD in couple of them and buy basic, brand name stocks from DOW Jones Index. This will give you a feel about the funds. It is just like driving your car and getting a grip. You need the first car drive to be smooth and you take in simple places and in a predictable fashion. Explore your own mentality and feelings and emotional level, risk feel etc. Don't take this as a be all end all. You change. The market will change you. Time always changes human beings. There will be a lot of learnings ahead telling no active management or active trading and just stick to index funds. Now, everyone start putting in index funds, the market will become inefficient by definition. Maybe, come up with your own index. Along the way, you might not agree with some companies - don't agree with them on environmental policies, their strategies and goals, their growth practices and the way they are, the stories and associations you have with them. For instance, if you are in the computer industry, many folks like Linux and dislike a Microsoft or Apple. No matter what or how much return is, one might not invest in them. Which is fine. Invest what you are comfortable with. Your principles and you matter. Money is just an extension. Similarly it is perfectly fine for individuals who slug it out in the private sector and not have the security and buffer or pension from those in the public sector to crave some security and instead want to put money in cash or just CDs. Totally fine and this is what the point of this blog is. It is not just another money blog. It is not another finance blog. Those info will be always available in government sites and whole tons of other blogs. This is about finance philosophy and how that drives what we invest and where we invest and what stocks we invest and what strategies we follow. 

My approach for the accounts are rather have a sprawling set of them than having one shop for all your investing needs. Some names that are quite common in the trading world are the Tradeking, zecco, TD Ameritrade, ETrade. I have been exploring the Level 3 which helps you buy fractional shares of brand names companies. Similarly, there is no harm in opening multiple types of accounts especially at the time of this writing when we have 0% savings rate for about 5 years running now. For most part, the online savings etc. give minimal APY in the US where the liquidity is available in plenty for the businesses.