I was an early adopter of Squidoo and wanted to use that forum to highlight the personal finance and investing knowledge I've slowly and painfully gained over the past 10 years. One of the most important things I know about investing is this: over time, most investors make market returns less cost. Therefore cost is one of the most important aspects of your investing.

Index mutual funds, especially those offered by Vanguard, have super-low costs.

Furthermore, index funds are among the best ways to "buy the market." Stock picking doesn't work (or if it does, it doesn't work forever -- reversion to the mean is a law of nature as compelling as gravity). Instead of picking sectors or individual companies, diversify by owning bits and pieces of thousands of companies.

I hope you find this information useful.