Investing your money

Do I invest my money? You bet I do! For years now my major investment has been my home or should I say homes. I am living in my 3rd home in 20 years. Like everyone else I started off with the small starter home and moved up in size and quality each step. When I mean quality I don't mean to keep up with the Jones' but the actual age, condition and location of the home. Now with the home prices dropping I don't think of my home so much as an investment but now as shelter and comfort.

In those many years I have also invested my money in stocks and mutual funds. Some of them bad, some good. I have learned also with my experience to invest in mutual funds rather than individual stocks. I had great foresight when several years ago I bought 50 shares of Lam Research stock. In the course of one month the price went from $38.00 a share to $120.00 a share. I sold it right before a 3 way split and the price bottomed out. It took well over 4 years for the price to rebound back to before the split. My other investments were not so good. There have been several companies that went belly up while I had 100's of shares of them. "Playing" the stock market (yes I did the day trader thing about 9 years ago) I have lost about $15K. On the other hand investing in mutual funds I have gained it all back and then some.

Learn from my experiences, don't day trade you will lose BIG time. Invest for the long run. Invest in companies that will be around in 20-30 years. Stay away from technology stocks, they are too volatile. Go with energy stocks and "green power" stocks as they are the wave of the future. I have several mutual funds right now and only one stock a "green stock" call Nova Bio Fuels (NBF) because I believe in the future of bio-diesel.

Invest, but invest wisely.

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