Hey Jeremiah,

Welcome to The Fool! You've definitely come to the right place to learn about investing. I'm a newbie myself, but I do have a few suggestions for you:

1. You might want to repost this on the Investing Beginners board, as it's much more active than this one:
http://boards.fool.com/investing-beginners-112963.aspx?mid=2...

2. You should check out our 13 Steps to Investing Foolishly:
http://www.fool.com/how-to-invest/thirteen-steps/index.aspx

There is a lot of information there, but you should definitely learn the basics before investing a fairly large sum of money.

Also, I *believe* some US-based brokers will not let you connect with international banks, so you will definitely want to check on that before opening an account.

Happy learning!
Robyn <--- works in the advertising department and is not an investing expert