 TITLE: Should You Invest During a Recession? CONTENT: How to Get Started With Investing\n---------------------------------\nThere's no one approach to investing your money.\nOf course, you can try handling investment decisions on your own. The easiest DIY path involves setting up an investment account at a traditional or online brokerage firm such as Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Merrill Lynch, SoFi and E-Trade. Depending on the type of brokerage firm, you might be able to reach out for professional investment advice.\nAn alternative is to let a robo-advisor do the work for you. Typically, a robo-advisor automatically makes investment decisions based on your preferences. For a more hands-on (and more expensive) approach, you can hire a personal financial advisor to manage your investments.\nNo matter which route you chose, here are three types of investment to consider:\n1.  Mutual funds: A mutual fund is a bucket of stocks, bonds or other securities. One type of mutual fund is an index fund, which mimics the performance of the stock market by investing stocks in a certain stock index, like the S&P 500. Overall, mutual funds tend to be less risky than individual stocks. A cousin of mutual funds is an exchange-traded fund (ETF). An ETF involves a basket of stocks or other types of securities. However, it's not identical to a mutual fund. One big difference: A mutual fund can be bought or sold only once during a single day, but an ETF behaves like a stock and can be traded numerous times throughout the day.\n2.  Individual stocks: When you buy an individual stock, you're essentially becoming an owner of a piece of the company. The company's financial performance, combined with market factors, dictate the value of its stock.\n3.  Bonds: A bond is a low-risk investment that's similar to an IOU. You're lending money to the borrower, such as a corporation or government entity, in exchange for a promise that you'll be repaid with a certain amount of interest.\nRather than buying one of these investments individually, you might look at purchasing them through a 401(k) or IRA if you're not already saving for retirement. These investment vehicles are designed to help you save money for retirement, whether that's 10 years or 40 years down the road. Both the 401(k) and the IRA offer tax advantages that individual funds, stocks and bonds don't.\nBefore settling on any type of investment, you might consider visiting with a financial advisor to set up an investment strategy that's tailored to your goals and designed to minimize risks. But while you can pick up valuable investment insights from a financial advisor, keep in mind that this advice comes at a price. A financial advisor typically charges an hourly fee, a flat fee or a percentage of the assets they're managing. These costs can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars. END