1. Figure out your goals.
When you first start thinking about this, it seems nebulous. It’s often hard to tangibly state what your goals are, especially if you’re young and single. However, you often find that they day you get married, it feels like a flood of goals hit you at once - buying a house, having a child, and so on.

Here’s what to do to get started. Take out a sheet of paper and list every financial goal you have in your life right now. What are you saving for? What would you like to be saving for? Things that might wind up on this list are retirement, your children’s education, a house down payment, complete debt freedom, a car, “walk away from your job” money, money to start a business, and so on. Some of those will be important to you, some won’t, and you may have some that aren’t even listed there.

Then, take that list and rank them by importance to you (or to you and your spouse). Don’t worry about what society says, but I will say that younger people tend to undervalue the importance of retirement. Other than that, it’s really about what’s important in your own life - not in what society thinks or what someone else sees as being important in life.

I tend to argue in favor of focusing on the top two to four goals. This way, an average person can actually reasonably accomplish those top goals in a reasonable timeframe. Figure out that time frame for those top goals. How much time is it before you reach that goal?

This doesn’t mean that your goals are set in stone. Everyone’s life changes over time and your goals may in fact change. The point is that your investment decisions are led by your goals, so before you even start investing, you should have a good grasp on what your goals are.

In my own life, I have several goals: retirement (targeted for age 60), my children’s college education (targeted for about seventeen years down the road), a new minivan (targeted for 1-2 years from now), and a new house in the countryside (targeted for about twelve years from now). Each of these have a different investment strategy, which we’ll get to in a minute.

2. Know your risk tolerance.

3. For short term goals (less than two years or so), keep the money in cash.

4. For medium term goals (two to ten years), diversify at your comfort level.

5. For long term goals (ten years or more), stocks are a pretty good place to put your money.

6. The best place for first-time stock investors to put their money is in a low-cost index fund.

This list has been severely abridged. To read the full list and full descriptions, view the original post at it’s source:

Six Steps for a Beginning Stock Investor (The Simple Dollar)