I am a recent college grad who is trying to save for retirement and a house. I live on a budget so I am able to put away about 250 a month. I am looking for a fund or stock or somthing to put my money into. Any suggestions?

Wow, new college grad with $250 a month to put away. I'm impressed. Keep up the good work.

Brokers such as Fidelity and Schwab have automatic investment programs for some of their mutual funds. As I understand it, the money gets deducted from your bank account. They waive their customary fees about transactions and also the fee for having a small total balance. The sort of money being talked about may be as low as $50 a month, but I'm not sure.

The Fool is down on mutual funds, because of their management fees and frequent underperformance compared to a standard measure such as the S&P 500, but I think they have their place. Schwab is www.schwab.com. Another one you might like to explore is Vanguard.

For starters, begin with the Fool School section (links from Fool.com home page) for an overview. Then look into the various Fool portfolios. They are described in related links. Foolish Four is the basic one, but there are several. You will also find boards discussing them in detail in the Folders.

The basic investment you may want to look at first is an S&P index fund. The best are from Vanguard. At $250/mo it will take a while to get to the minimums. (Other mutual fund companies may have lower minimums.) But you could accumulate funds in a savings account to get to those minimums.

You probably should look at drip investing. It is well suited to investing the amount of money you have in mind in stocks while minimizing your costs. Minimizing your costs is important especially when you are starting out.

You should develop an overall financial plan. For retirement several strategies can work, but for most of us fund an IRA or preferably Roth IRA to the max and your 401K or 403b if you have one. Savings for home downpayment would best be in stocks. Drip, index fund, Foolish 4, long term buy and hold are all possible strategies.

Its great that you have started with the Fool early in your career. You seem to be off to a good start. Read and study to learn as you go. Feel free to post additional questions on specific aspects. Welcome to the boards.

Good luck to you. Good investing.

I would point you to explore the Foolish Workshop and some of the screens. More risk but also much much more on the upside. Keep reading and studing. Then when you are ready to invest you will have a small pile of money to begin to invest into one of these screens to start. You still have many years until retirement. At least 20 until you might consider retirement. Just make the best of these earily years to make that portfilio GROW. The more it can grow earily in your career the easier it will be to reach your goals.

Vagabond