Investing is often an intimidating financial move for most people. When I hear and read about things like RICs, REITs, Trusts, Bonds, Allocation, Diversification, Stock Options, Mutual Funds, Ups, Downs, NASDAQ, Capital Gains blah, blah, blah... I start to feel as if I should just forget about the whole thing and go take a nap. Not only is it intimidating, but it's just plain boring (in my opinion, but then again, some people may think what I like is boring too).

Yet, even though it is not a fun topic or at least a scary and unpredictable one, I have realized the importance of investments and the role they play in maximizing your financial freedom for the future. So, I started looking for ways to make investing easier and less time consuming. I now have a system that nearly runs itself (just like the rest of my finances, but I'll talk about that some other time), and will bring about great returns for the long-term.

I don't want to tell you how to invest or what to invest in but here is how I do it: (Take it for what it's worth).

First, I have two Roth IRA accounts and one regular individual investment account. One Roth IRA account is in my wife's name and the other two are in my name. This allows us to maximize the amount of money we can invest tax-free. See, the returns (amount that is earned) from Roth IRAs are not taxed unless you take the money out before the age of 59.5. The maximum amount of money you can put in a Roth every year is $5,000. Therefore, having two accounts allows us to invest $10,000 every year.

My third investment account is for any money I have for investing beyond the $10,000 and for short term financial goals. This account's returns are taxable every year but the advantage is that I am able to take it out at any time.

I have all of my investment accounts through Scottrade. Why did I chose Scottrade? Five Reasons:

• I can access my accounts online at any time.
• It is free to have an account and requires no minimum to start one.
• It has a large array of different funds and stocks that you will find most anywhere else.
• Low trading fees. (People often forget how these little trading fees can add up).
• They are a nationwide company, but have local offices in almost every major city which makes them easier to work with if I need to call and talk to someone - rather than talking to someone with broken English over seas that does not really care about my account.

Where do I invest my Roth IRA accounts?

For my wife's Roth IRA account, I have chosen to invest in a life-cycle fund (this is just one name for it). This kind of fund is determined only by age. In other words, if I plan on retiring at age 60, I would want to get a life-cycle fund that is optimised for 2045. These funds usually contain the date in their names. Simply do a little research on Scottrade and you will be able to find them.

The advantage of using this kind of fund is that I simply buy the fund, set up an automatic deposit of x-amount of dollars per month to be placed in the fund, and then leave it. It is already allocated (spread out between both stocks and bonds) and diversified (spread out between many different TYPES of stocks and bonds) and usually follows index funds (which are funds that follow the majority of the market). In other words, if the "stock market" as a whole goes up, so does my account. But if it goes down, so does my account. The market's 50-year history shows about an 8% return, which is about what I am hoping for here.

For MY Roth IRA, I have chosen to follow a proven program called Sound Mind Investing. Austin Pryor and his son Mathew Pryor have developed an investment program called the "Upgrading Strategy". Every month, they send out a newsletter and give me suggested funds to invest in. Before 2008, they had an average ten-year history of about 13.3%. And even with last year's drop in the market, that remained at 6.1%. In other words, if you were to invest $25,000 in 1999 and add nothing else to it, you will almost have doubled your money by today.This is impressive considering more than 75% of all "experts" have had trouble beating the market (earn over 8%) for... well... a long long time.

Sound Mind Investing's mission statement goes hand in hand with Financial Secrets 101's vision: To help people become better stewards of their time and money. Oh yeah, and their prices are great - only around $79 for the year. This is the cheapest most sound financial advice I could find.

Even though I spend maybe thirty minutes a month updating my account, this saves me a tone of valuable time that I would normally have to spend researching and calculating what my next move is.

What do I do with my regular account?

For my other account, I haven't done a whole lot with it yet, but I'll probably continue to follow SMI's upgrading strategy and see what happens.

Well that's it. Hope this helps to take the painful feeling out of the word "Investing."

Please don't wait until you are 40 or 50 to start investing! Start in little ways today. Remember, just $100 per month could make a huge difference for your future.

• To open an account with Scottrade:
• To start Sound Mind Investing's Upgrading Strategy: Enroll Today.