Investing is key to building wealth over time. It allows your money to grow through compound interest. This is going to be the most important step in your financial life. You should start by paying off your debts, saving money for emergencies, and finally investing. Investing is different than saving. Money invested will bring you back way more interest than savings ever will.
There are a couple of simple ways to start. The first is mutual funds. There are so many mutual funds out there. These are funds that are managed by professionals. You can check out different funds out there by reading the description of the type of securities they own and buy. Those securities can include stocks or bonds. You could even buy some that have a mix of both. Please make sure you check their expense ratio and see if they charge any commissions.
The next thing you could consider is index funds. Index funds are not managed by professionals. Instead, they track and mirror certain markets. The most common one out there is the S&P 500. This index is so simple and is a great way to diversify as it has the 500 largest public companies in the Unites States. The best part is that index funds usually have low costs since they are not managed by professionals.
The last thing to consider are exchange-traded funds or ETFs. These funds act a little bit more like stocks. In the sense that they trade throughout the day. You could also even put limit orders or short sell them. The difference is they have securities like mutual and index funds. They are also easier to buy since they do not have minimums like the other two funds described.