The lesson of investment for NON-millionaires

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".
-George Santayana (1863 - 1952), The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

Some of our readers have pointed out that our postings are getting
heavily inclined to reporting on Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Yes.
We like ETFs and Mutual funds because we always follow these
important basic steps of investing (applicable to our target readers who
are NOT millionnaires - we always emphasize on NOT):

(i) Know who you are and what you are. Remember most probably
nothing can dramatically change your personal finance if you donot
deserve it. In 1999-2000 so many people earned so much from
"unwarranted exuberance" of stocks but starting from March'2000
they lost much more than that simply because they did not deserve
that money. Depending on who and what you are, determine how much
risk you can afford. If you are not a good swimmer, donot jump into the
sea on a tornado night. If you are NOT a millionaire, do not throw your
5000 $ to that nanotechnology stock which, experts are saying, would
boom like another Microsoft within 2 years.
Be stingy and frugal while investing - nothing wrong in it! In May of
2000 we observed with amusement that some of our friends were
driving 7 miles to get gas for their SUVs from Costco (which charges a
few cents less per gallon), while their investments in stocks like Infosys,
Commerce One and JDS Uniphase were plunging by thousands of dollars
each hour!
... As John Bogle (Vanguard's founder) once said, "We all are too smart
for our own good".

Oh God! We spent too much of time on item (i) itself.
Next two rules are short:
ii) Diversify your investment and donot run too much after the most
lucrative one.
(iii) Invest regularly in a broader market and try to keep your
investment cost low. Dollar-cost averaging is a very powerful
investment. So we like Funds. So, hardly ever we purchase individual
stocks.