Do you find investing to be complex to understand? Would you like to know more about investing in real estate or a small business? Eric Tyson's book Investing For Dummies discusses these investments and more. His writing is clear and concise so a beginning investor can easily learn how to invest.

Investing For Dummies Book Review

Have you ever invested in real estate? If so, please share your experiences.

Or maybe you started your own small business? Do you feel like this was a good investment?

A for Dummies book is definitely where I'd need to start. I've had this brain block about investing mainly because of my finances themselves. But I also wonder if it's wise to invest or pay down debt first or do these things simultaneously. See, I'm totally green.

Trish - I like the For Dummies books because they are so easy to understand.

My advice would be to pay down debt while building an emergency fund. This way you are building a reserve of money for future needs that can help you avoid creating more debt.

Plus, if you are paying off credit cards, you are getting rid of a high interest rate. Credit card rates are impossibly high. Any investment you make would not produce as high a return so it's better to pay off the high interest debt.

Now I'm not counting the mortgage in this debt paydown. Obviously, that will take a while to pay. So you might as well go ahead and start investing.

Once you build up a reserve fund (say 3 months of expenses) then I recommend starting to put money into investments (preferably a 401k or Roth Ira).