One such investment would be any training you might spend that increases your potential to earn money (e.g. taking a course at a reputable college which will open carreer opportunities or help your to understand and invest your money).

Another may be reading this blog.

It is a bit more difficult to see and weigh up benifits vs cost of hidden investments.

I think the marketing guys play to this idea, when trying to sell cars and vacations

As a side – I technically would call a holiday/vacation maintainence as apposed to an investment. This doesn’t mean it’s not important – a well oiled cog will do more work more easily.
With this in mind, I feel justified to spend on myself ‘from time to time’, but I’m not about to lie to myself about it either.

Your comment makes me happy. My goal with this post was to show that investing is not difficult to understand, and that it is not only for financial-gurus and super-rich folk, but also for “normal people”.

To be able to invest half of your income is a very good goal!!

But when I said 50% I was not really talking about 50% of your income. I mean that at least half of the investments you make should be for the (very) long-term.

E.g. I’ve bought shares in about 10 different companies. About half of the shares I bought, I probably won’t ever sell, or I’ll only sell them many many years from now.

Needlessly to say, I picked those shares very carefully.

I tried to find companies that have been around for a long time, will still be around for a long time, have a good track record, pay consistently good dividends, and had a reasonable share price at the time when I bought.

One more thing. For people who have a lot of debt, my advice is to first focus on paying off most of your debt, before you focus on making investments.

It’s OK to have some debt and also make investments, but it’s best to first pay off your “bad debts”, before your start investing ( see http://liberta.co.za/blog/is-there-such-a-thing-as-good-debt/ ).

I don’t know Edward Jones (I’m South African, remember ). I briefly looked at the website, but not in enough detail to tell you anything.

I’ve got a follow-up post lined up on identifying good investments.

But here are some general tips I follow:
1. If you don’t understand something, don’t invest in it.
2. REALLY, if it doesn’t make sense to you, either figure it out until it does, or just don’t invest in it.
3. It’s a good idea to diversify, i.e. invest in several different things, so if one tanks, the others will save it. E.g. buy shares in some foreign companies, some local companies, invest in some property, some cash (read bonds or savings account), and then perhaps a few other things to play with.
4. Invest most of your money (my advice is at least 50%) for the long-term. Like seriously long-term, between 10 years and death-do-us-part long-term.