Foray into Investment and Stocks

Come on. Don't be shy. Tell the truth.

Me and money? A match in heaven!

So I decided today while aimlessly browsing at 8:43 pm, that one day, I want to be not working other than a couple of hours in the morning on my laptop, owning a lovely house with a wonderful garden, a cute wooden chicken coop with six female chickens, a dog, a cat, one goat, and three (yes three) ducks. Two female and one male. I want to have time to plant an extensive vegetable garden, and have a flower garden worthy of envy, which I would design and put together myself. It would be the perfect place to sit on a lazy spring afternoon with a cup of tea and a good book, all the while around me, my chickens cluck and peck the ground, my ducks playfully quack in some artificial small pond, my cat refuses to give me affection and plays hard-to-get, and my dog sits at my feet keeping an eye on the wayward chickens. The goat probably escapes its pen and is eating my vegetables as I read, and I'll lock it up as punishment later on. But I won't stay angry at her for too long. Maybe I'll have a family with kids to run after and force affection on the chickens, and maybe I won't. But I'll definitely invite you guys over hopefully with a bunch of nieces and nephews, so they can run after and scare the chickens.

And most importantly, I want to be young enough and have enough time to enjoy all of it.

I have to warn you: I'm quite determined.

So once I concocted my perfect fantasy of heaven on earth, I figured well, I won't stay aimless and doing what I don't really want for the rest of my life. I need a real plan. Thus at 8:47pm, I decided that it is time I do something with my money. Considering that I now have a nice little nest egg of $5000 in the bank, I want to start out investing part of it, learn the ropes, and dive in.

So here I was at 10:11 pm and the only progress I've made is that I have leaned what a brokerage account is and what discount online brokers are. I've also learned that I must have the first in order to start trading in stocks, mutual funds, and options. Considering I've no idea what the difference is between the three, I did what I always do when I'm confused and suffering from an information and heat induced headache. I headed over to Amazon, read extensive reviews, and bought a book. The book is titled "The Boglehead's Guide to Investing". People in the reviews, investors both novice and veterans, are apparently swearing by it as the only investment book you'll ever need and perfect for both the experienced and the novice.

So my plan for the near future is as follows:

First: I'm going to read this book, and hopefully learn all the requirements of how to start investing and what to do.

Second: I'm going to open a brokerage account. Now this is the tricky part.
I came up with two seemingly decent options, that cater to international individuals, after reading reviews on Smartmoney.com and Barrons. I'll try them both out for a while and see which one works. However, I'm holding out on any concrete steps until I've read the book.

Third? Well, hopefully my money smarts and general good intuition in life will carry me through, and I will make a decent turn out on my money to be able to get my dream house + garden + future farm pets by the time I'm thirty-five.

What do you think? Doable? Either way, I'm still absolutely determined to get my house and garden.