Wouldn't we all! :-)

Seriously, qdognj is right -- with reward comes risk. Any stock or bond will come with some risk, though you can address that some. You could choose, for example, U.S. Savings Bonds, which currently offer an interest rate of around 4.5%, though there are some interest penalties if you don't hold the bonds at least five years. Treasury Bills return about the same as the CD, and are backed by the federal government, but bear the same interest risk as CDs (mentioned below). Or you could go for money-market funds, but they're not really returning any more than that CD.

The question about the CD is how long the term is. On a long-term CD, you're betting that your return will be better now than CDs will offer during that term. Or else you've left money on the table. You won't lose your capital, but you may lose out on some interest you could have earned.

Or, if you have enough money, you can choose a bunch of CDs, some short-term, some long-term, to try to spread the risk of ending up with a low rate as other CDs offer higher rates.

If you don't have enough money to build up a diversified portfolio then you might be ready for mutual funds.

I get no real sense of what the goals in investing are here other than to make money safely. That is why people pay the fees for a full service stock broker. He should be asking the relevant questions.

You really need to do your own homework and be prepared to take responsibility if your investments do poorly before investing in equities. If you require somebody other than yourself to blame if your investments do poorly IMHO you are not ready for equities.

My first stock investment was Boeing at $16...it went up to $51 in a year and I more than tripled my money. Then I took all of that money and invested in some really good picks from my broker...in 6 months I had lost 1/2 of it! Or how about my Microsoft stock? I got in on it 7-8 years ago and kept making lots of money. I kept telling my wife to get in...and she finally did. She bought at $60 and it went down to under $30 shortly thereafter and she's been sitting with a 50% loss for the last 4 years. Or let me tell you about my Cisco stock that I got at $60 that went up to nearly $100...before it went down to $26. If you can handle the roller coaster ride, jump on board.

I suspect that you're a conservative investor and don't have money to waste. Over the long term you will do better in the stock market than in CDs, but some years you may end up with less than you started with. If you can't accept that, you'll have many sleepless nights. I recommend you stick with CDs for a while, and get used to the idea of investing by putting together a "phantom" portfolio of things that are interesting to you. Choose mutual funds, rather than individual stocks, as that spreads risk over many stocks, and would be what I would recommend to you if you finally end up investing. Then go to the web site of a reliable mutual fund company, like Fidelity.com, do some reading, and pick out some mutual funds that appeal to you, and write down the prices. Next, go to, say, Yahoo's finance area and create a portfolio. Set it up as if you've bought $2500 of several different mutual funds. Then check your "portfolio" every day. If some of your picks aren't doing well, take the money and switch it into another fund and see what happens. It will give you a sense of how the market moves, what the ups and downs are like, and whether you've got the stomach for daily gains and losses. If you do this for 6 months or a year, it will tell you whether you can handle investing. Some people can't, and that's ok. But it's best to find out with a phantom portfolio rather than your own funds.

How long do you want to leave this money to do its working? 6 mos. - or 6 yrs. - or 30 years, till retirement?

Do you have an emergency fund? It sure is nice to have a cushion, in case of unexpected needs for a larger fund than can be met comfortably from current income. Can you survive if you don't have a paycheque for 3 mos.? 6 mos?

For a number of years, I kept some funds in readily available form, in case of such need.

But now I don't need to do that.

I have a number of stocks (and some equity-based mutual funds that I bought earlier and have been too undisciplined to dump, as I don't enjoy paying about $1.00 in $5.00 that my investments earn to the managers who are loking after it - but some of the managers have produced good growth). I'd rather learn how money works and pay that $1.00 to myself. Maybe not in the early years, but increasingly, as I got smarter.

In the early years, sometimes my investments did less well that that managed by the mutual fund managers. And, to be honest, some still don't.

But few of those managers have a better growth record than the market as a whole, or the various components of it, over the long term.

And did you know that you can buy a chunk of the various components of the stock market, at a much lower annual fee than you pay to the fund managers?

Actually, a number of them hold a substantial portion of their holdings in that kind of investment.

Don't let learning how money works intimidate you - take on the job of learning how it works, and get working on it.

If somone had told you in kindergarten of all of the stuff that you'd have to learn by the end of high school, you'd probbly have gone running to look for the nearest cave, ran inside, and tried to pull it in after you. Wouldn't you have?

Don't forget - when you give $10,000. to the bank to care for, feeling comfortable with the guarantee that they'll return every dollar to you that you lent them in the first place, in addition to the rent on the money, there's another guarantee that they never mention ... they won't pay you one dollar more, either.

And the value of every one of those dollars that you gave them shrank, every year that they held it.

They pay you back in shrunk dollars!

And make more on your money than you did.

Not my idea of good time.

Learn how to run your own money, effectively.

Good wishes for increasing skills in managing your money.

ole joyful

P.S. Now, some of my stock and mutual fund certificates sit with the credit union, and I have a fully-secured line of credit, at low interest rate, that I can call on in case of an emergency.

Granted, the interest isn't deductible ... but the increasing rate of dividends that those stocks pay, and their growth in value over the years, more than compensates.

Especially since, in Canada, interest income is taxed at top rates, and dividends on Canadian stocks at a very much lower rate ... and the dividend rates on quality stocks increase over the years.

Also, since I'm on pensions, those pensions continue, whether I'm in too poor health to be able to go to work, and I don't have to worry about layoffs. All that I need do to keep them coming ... is stay above the grass!

A stock that I bought 40 years ago for $4.20 or so, originally paying about a dime annually, has grown to over $100. a couple of months ago, about $97.00 now - and now pays a dividend of $3.08 annually.

o j

In Growth stocks, money is reinvested into modernizing and improving the company. Dividends are minimal and rare.

Income stocks are those of companies with stable earnings, which pay huge dividends to shareholders. Mutual funds are an example.