Actually I found that the book investing for dummies was quite good.
If all else fails and you are planning to leave the money alone for at least 5+ years go with the Vanguard SP500 Index fund. You can invest as little as $3000, the fees are low.
The advantages:
- It is an old fund
- It tracks a well known benchmark, the SP500
- It invests in about 500 stocks, so you get a lot of diversification
- The expense ratio is only 0.17%, so for every $100 you invest they only take $0.17/year to run it
Disclaimer, I am still trying to get out of debt myself, so I don’t have any money invested in this, nor do I have any interest in this or any other mutual fund.
Disclaimer #2, Jack Bogle who founded the Vanguard group when to the same high school I did, many years before me, I shook his hand once. You probably don’t care about this