[billscamaros]

So I can say that this thread has motivated me to look a little bit at the existing investments that I have ..... and I use the word "investments" loosely.

I have a long neglected Fidelity IRA with some cash sitting in cash reserve. As you might guess, my gain on cash sitting in reserve over the past few years has been .000000000000001%. I'm one of those guys who knows absolutely nothing about stocks or invesments; nothing beyond how to log into the account and see my balance. This stuff has always been so confusing!!

So .... due to Greg's obvious excitement about this investing stuff .... I decided to take the time to become familiar with my account. I've been poking around on the Fidelity website, using their research tools and reading their investing info. I decided to use the Fidelity account as my "test bed" for learning the basics. A few days ago, I bought some Nike and McDonalds stock out of my IRA cash. As Greg had mentioned in one post, the stock price immediately dipped into the red and I thought "crap ...... now I've made Greg loose millions!!" But after a day or so, it was back into the positive numbers. (Why does that initial price dip happen??)

Although I realize that it's all "paper", my Fidelity account has increased in value more over the past few days than it did in the past two years. I still have some cash left in reserve, and I've been Google Financing virtually every name that comes into my head ... I've even made up a few acronyms! Eventually I'll spread the cash out into small chunks of stocks that follow the "10 year gain" and "dividends reinvested" rules. Since this Fidelity IRA money is left over from a previous employer IRA that I rolled into another fund, I can't/won't "co-mingle" any other cash into it. And this is seperate from my current employer 401K where most of my retirement money is sitting.

Next up is to get my "emergency/regular savings" up to where I want them, and then I'll look at a seperate brockerage account.

Anyhow ..... thanks to this thread, I've learned a ton over the past week or so. And continuous learning is a life goal.

Thanks guys!!