There are many options available for investment. You can choose to put your money in government or private sector. Similarly you can also invest in properties like land and building or in bonds and other financi al instruments that yield interest.Your locality may have specific sources for micro cap investing money. Information pertaining to this can be had from the local market. If you wish to learn to invest money you must get to know the ways to invest money, and the place to invest money or where to invest money.

You must be able to answer the following questions effectively:

• How to invest money
• Reasons to invest money

Investment Options / Sources of Investing

 Here is an example to demonstrate the types of investments. Pretend you are going to start a lemonade stand.

You need some money to get your stand started. You ask your grandmother to lend you $100 and write this down on a piece of paper: "I owe you (IOU) $100, and I will pay you back in a year plus 5% interest." Your grandmother just bought a bond (IOU) by lending money to your "company" named Lemo. To get more money, you sell half of your company for $50 to your brother Tom. You put this transaction in writing: "Lemo will issue 100 shares of stock. Tom will buy 50 shares for $50." Tom has just bought 50% of the shares of stock from Lemo.

You sell $500 worth of lemonade. Business is good. Your costs for setting up the stand are $150, plus you pay yourself $100 for the hours you work. The company makes profits of $250.

After one year, from the $250 profits, you pay back your grandmother $100 plus $5 interest. You pay $20 to Tom and yourself, shareholders (a fancy name for owner). In business, the $20 paid to the owners is called a dividend. You decide to put the dividend money in the bank. Banking the money is a short-term investment.

This example covers three types of investments: short-term investments, bonds, and stocks. Besides these three, there are real estate (buying a house), commodities (gold and silver), collectibles (such as baseball cards), and mutual funds.

(A) Investment in Bank F.D.

FD: Opportunity for retirees to diversify their investment portfolio

Once you reach the retirement age, your investment options begin to shift into an entire new path. Earlier where maximizing returns may be of primary importance, stability in income is given the highest priority after retirement.

Although financial experts have been advising to have a significant prudent reserve for one's after retirement years but with a pre-set amount of funds, investment for old age from thirties and forties become difficult. At the same time it is also important that an assured and a regular income is coming your way subsequent to retirement and therefore investment is a must for retirees. However it is a complicated proposition.

Since retirees do not have any alternative sources of income like salary to rely upon, a stable income becomes the main motive of their investment. High risk-high return avenues typically take a back seat at this stage. So given such a constraint, there are only a limited range of options for the retirees.

Traditionally Senior Citizens Savings Scheme (SCSS) and Post Office Monthly Income Scheme (POIS) were one of the most common avenues in the portfolio of a retired person. Although there is a high range of safety attached to these schemes, cap on the upper investment limit makes them outdated. Even if they are safe and come under the methodical financial planning, one can enhance their financial portfolio by looking into a host of alternative long-range investment options including fixed deposits with monthly income plan.

(B) Investment in Gold