Consult the Better Business Bureau and speak to your state consumer affairs representatives. One final point to keep in mind when you start to make your enquiries. All these organizations stand to benefit by having you as a customer. That means some, if not all, will try to get you to sign up straight away. There is a maturity period, after which you get back the sum you deposited along with the interests accrued. Since you are going to get your savings here in the form of interests, the concept of high CD rates becomes important. It does not take a lot of genius to understand that if you make Certificates of Deposit with high CD rates, you stand to save an appreciable amount. The next step in getting started is to make certain that you understand the need to leave your money invested for a reasonable period of time. That should really be no less than five years in spite of any overnight success stories you may have heard. Markets fluctuate and at times they can be very volatile. A number of brokerage houses put on regular training seminars for new investors. These will take you through the basics of learning the terminology of the stock market and also on to how to select stocks using various indicators. Some will even teach you how to spot trends and these can be as important for timing your exit from a position as getting into it in the first place. Safe Investing For Beginners Safe investing should be the aim of anyone thinking of investing for the first time. Of course safe investing means different things to different people. To some the idea of safe is simply to put their money on deposit. However from a stock market point of view let's look at what safe means to new investors. The second way to approach the market is with a view that you are young enough to gamble a little on the hares of investing. If these go wrong you will still have the time to recover and rebuild your portfolio. Of course the third way may be best of all. You could apply a certain percentage on the riskier hares while placing the majority of your cash with the safe and steady tortoises.