What is the best investment plan for an 18 year old?

Question

As I turn 18 I'm enlisting in the Air Force, you will know that we get paid an ok salary (since I will be entering three pay grade levels than other airmen). My housing will be covered as well as food and uniforms. I will have my entire paycheck with the exception maybe a hundred, two hundred dollars in which I will use for myself and a single cell phone bill. I want to invest my money in stocks or somekind of legitmate high yield investment. I was told to invest in stock with GE. However, the return isn't that high you would have to invest over $20,000 grand to see a decent return. I was thinking of taking a couple hundred or even a thousand dollars of my pay check to put towards an investment is this too little or too much?

Does anyone have any ideas or advice?

What can I do to make sure I will have a little bit of money set aside (more than if I just saved money) in the future?

**REPOST**

No one really gave me an answer of substance, so I decided to repost this question.

Answer 1

I'll give you an easy and short answer.  If you plan on saving money for the long term (meaning you wont need it for at least 3-5 years) then your best bet are index mutual funds.  These charge very little for upkeep (no load or commisions usually) and only try to match the market.  Over the past 80 years or so the economy has grown on average above 10% a year so that would be your return if you keep these funds long enough.  No savings account will get you this much.  Just keep in mind that we are in a jittery state lately so it is possible in the short term that you might see some losses.

Answer 2

Get and stay out of debt!  I see a lot(!) of young people ruin their lives early with a credit card.  $14,000 in debt is not unheard of.  And those interest rates will keep you in debt until you're 30.  Is this investment advice?  Yes!  You won't have money to invest if you're in debt.  And it makes no sense at all to maintain an investment of $10,000 yielding 10% per year if you have credit debt of $14,000 at 20% ... see?

Now, you're joining the Air Force. OK, I just finished 20 yrs of that, so here's a tip.  Get an ALLOTMENT going into your savings as soon as you get to your first duty station!  How this works.... it puts say... $300 (or more...be careful and think about it) of your pay directly into your savings every month....the rest of your pay may go into your checkbook to spend however you want.   Year after year, do not touch this money going into your savings.  You think you have discipline to just transfer the money manually every month, maybe, but here is what I found:  if it's available in my checking, it gets spent.  With the allotment, you never actually see it at all until you peek in your savings.  You'd be surprised how qwk the yrs go by, then you look.... $15000!   Cool!

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you don't have to wait until you've got $10K.  You can get a brokerage account and start with $1,000.   But, you can loose money real qwk in the market, and you can make it real qwk too.  I just want to encourage you to be very slow and deliberate about it.  You're 18, so time is on your side.  This is great you're starting to think about it.  I learned about stocks the hard way.  Having been there, I advise caution and moving deliberately, carefully, after good study...and 'paper trading'... [google/yahoo that].  Waiting until the $10K mark will ensure you've had time to study and watch the land of sharks that is the stock market.  Optionally, I think you could also have your allotment go straight to a brokerage account, not just savings.  But do be careful and not in a hurry to trade, OK?

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Now, $15K is a healthy amount to have on hand so you can start thinking about stocks, bonds and real estate.  When your savings bumps over the $10K mark, start learning all you can about theses investments (read, read, read!), and *then* spread it around...some stocks, some bonds, etc, *after* you've done your research.  Hope I've been clear.  Good luck, God bless and protect you.

[[[please copy and paste this post into a Word doc and save it, before it gets deleted.  I'm prone to getting violations these days]]]

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An online brokerage account, one could say, is just like an online bank account, but instead of seeing your cking account and cash avail for w/drawal and credits and debits, you see cash avail for investing, and list of stock and stuff you hold.  You sell stocks with a couple mouseclicks, your cash goes up.  You buy stocks, your cash goes down. And it  connects you into the stock exchange moving your orders right to the exchange floor.  There are many good ones... TDAmeritrade ($10 a trade), but you can find even cheaper per trade.  Cheaper not always better, tho.   Please explore the link to (hopefully) get all the remaining answers to your questions...minimum to open an acount, etc, etc.  Good luck!  http://www.tdameritrade.com/welcome1.htm...