<prompt> Human: So I have a 401k set up at my company, and some stored in a separate one from my previous one, but thats it. Ive got a decently low rent for Boston 800month, have about 45k of debt from my car, student loans, and credit cards. I pay off about 1000 of that a month. I have some left over at the end of each month that I want to start investing, but I dont know where to start. I remember some stuff from my econ class in high school, but thats about it. Do I do the investing through my credit union, or possibly my mint.com account? Should I do blue stocks like Google, apple, etc? Or penny stocks? Im looking for low risklow return right now, so I can at least get my foot in the door. Thanks for any help!  <response>: If youre interested in low risklow reward, just use that money to pay off you debt. This is an oversimplification, but if you have debt at 6 and you pay it off, that is a guaranteed 6 return on that investment because you dont have to pay the interestIf you do want to invest then dont try to beat the market, especially if youre going off of what you learned in high school econ. Open an account with Fidelity, Vanguard or something similar, open an IRA you need to decide if Roth or traditional is right for you, and invest in a low fee SP 500 index fund. The SP 500 has traditionally grown at about 7 each year. 