I am proud of my entire family for various kinds of reasons. This time I get to mention my youngest brother, Tommy, who made his first investment at 14 years old. Even at this age, he learned the first few

Procrastination is one of humans' biggest enemy, and it burns up your life fast! I see too many people procrastinating in the finance arena. Some things, like finance, must be taken care of now or yesterday. Once you learn the basics, you'll be glad you did.

Time is money. It directly affects the results I am describing in a negative fashion.

If you are years away from needing the money, it is mandatory that you seek aggressive investments which may loose money in short term, but should exceed the gains of conservative investments over the long term.

By the term aggressive, I do not mean as extreme as buying a few technology stocks. The level I am talking about is purchasing shares of a stock mutual fund. This will provide the best balance of long term results and minimal management on your part.

This type of aggressive investment may suffer from loss during any given short term period of a few years. The gains produced by this type of investment however, will outweigh the losses over the long term. The overall gain should beat conservative investments in the same period.

Although a stock mutual fund can be aggressive, it can also be diversified such that you don't have to keep watching it's performance. The folks that manage the mutual fund are also interested in your money doing well. They will continuously watch the assets in the fund that you own for necessary adjustments. That is their job. You hired them. That is why they take a tiny bit of the money you gave them to invest for you. The good news is that you do not have to worry about keeping track of any of that. because it is all hidden in the price. Even after they take their pay, the return on your remaining investment is as good as I am describing.

Under the long term aggressive strategy, you must learn to weather temporary loss. When the investments have a period of loss, do not panic. You can do this by understanding aggressive investment strategies and typical returns. In fact, you shouldn't have to watch your diversified investment over short intervals because you are only interested in the long term results.

Of course, I didn't know any of this at such a fortunate age. In the next section, POWER OF TIME, I'll introduce some numbers to show how much better Tommy will perform because of how time affects the outcome of investments.