<prompt> Human: Alright, how in the world would I even begin to do so? I just recently got an awesome paying job and investing seems like a good idea. Are there sites that I can go to, to do so? Can someone dumb it down for me and explain the benefits and outcomes of it? Thanks so much!!  <response>: There are all sorts of sites that help with simple investing. TDAmeritrade, Etrade, to mane a couple. Signing up for accounts is usually free, just requiring you to link an existing bank account to transfer funds. Now, as for how to invest, there are a lot of options, depending basically on how much time and attention you want to invest heh as well. A lot of money can be made by studying companies and market trends and using those observations to buy low and sell high on a dailyhourly basis. Theres a lot of risk there, of course, and you can lose just as big as you can win. Its not so different than gambling in some respects; and only advisable if youre really good at counting cards reading the market as a result. I have known people for whom this is their job, and they can pull in a couple thousand dollars a day on good days just buying and selling what they have invested already. I grew my own meager portfolio by 12,000 in a little over a year doing monthly buysells admittedly, this was immediately post 2008, so it was hard NOT to make money on the market rebound, heh.A more passive, but viable long-term, strategy is looking for stable companies that pay dividends. These companies will pay out a portion of their profits to stockholders on an annual or quarterly basis. A good strategy is to use those dividends to buy even more of their stock to get even LARGER dividends down the line. And most of the time, the earnings on such payouts is larger than interest on a regular savings account, or the inflation rate. My personal suggestion is to invest in 3-4 different dividend stocks, all in different industries to mitigate losses should a particular sector take a blow for some reason, putting a little money into them each weekmonth even as low as 20-50 ea a month is a good start. Then continually reinvest the dividends. If all goes well, by the time youre 60, youll be pulling a few grand a year from the dividends alone without even selling off your investments for retirement cash. Its important to research the companys earning history which most sites let you look up rather easily, and make sure their payouts are sustainable. Also try to select stocks that pay out a larger percentage than youd get from a simple CD or bond. 