Like a lot of other things in my life I wish I had started earlier, but lesson learned. I've learned from my mistakes and now I'm making the right moves. My daughter is ten and I've already got her started on her savings and we are looking into who offers the best Roth IRA's for minors, by the time she's my age, let alone time for her to retire who knows if there will be any social security any where. So just to share a few sites to help anyone interested learn about saving and investing. Forgive me but some of the sites are for young children but I use them for myself and my daughter b/c it's breaks things down in terms I can understand.

If you have a job, or working anywhere, bringing in any kind of income, I don't care if it's babysitting, or paper route, you should be saving a portion of it and learning about investing.

My favorite saying I tell my daughter when she ask ME for something I won't buy, "money gives you the power to buy whatever you want to buy, so save your money and empower yourself"

young children : kidsbank.com - for the young but has good info ; younginvestor.com - teaches young children about investing ; orangekids.com - takes children on adventures while learning about saving and investing ; aba.com - teaches young children about credit also has activities for parents. bankersonline.com also talks about IRA's for minors. - If parents are still claiming children on income tax it's best to fund the IRA as a gift and it will be tax free when it's time to withdraw.

young adults : teenvestor.com - for teens interested in starting their own business and investing. ; http://senseanddollars.thinkport.org/ - http://senseanddollars.thinkport.org/  - get smart about money, credit cards, planning proms, making your money grow, has a game called "check it out" gives you one months worth of income and one months worth of bills and you have to meet all the obligations with out running out of money. ; http://www.familyeducation.com/topic/front/0,1156,62-13430,00.html - http://www.familyeducation.com/topic/front/0,1156,62-13430,0 0.html  - this is a good site for education and learning about money, this particular link takes you straight to family and finances. also has additional links to help teens with budgeting and managing credit cards.

adults : look into Fidelity.com ; USAA.com ; Vanguard.com - (also offers IRA's for minors) ; TDWaterhouse.com- (also IRA's for minors), cohenandsteers.com (real estate). There are so many avenues for investing the key is knowing how you want to invest your money, and being smart about it. Whether it's stock, mutual funds, CD's, IRA's, bonds, real estate, 401(K), money market or any of the many other ways to invest and save.

Like Nike says Just Do It!

also if you already have investments or insurance and want to check the company's ratings I use http://www.moodys.com - www.moodys.com - requires you to sign up, http://www.standardandpoors.com - www.standardandpoors.com - rates bonds also http://www.weissratings.com - www.weissratings.com and http://www.ambest.com - www.ambest.com  - rate insurance but require a fee.

Please feel free to offer any other suggestions - hope this helps someone.