Each month we ask you to write in with your questions about finance. Our expert, Maggie Murphy, has been an investment consultant for 15 years in the New York area. She will respond to your questions every other month. Email us any time.

Dear Maggie,

I have some money to invest. I'd like to try some of these hot individual tech stocks, but with the NASDAQ seeming so volatile, I'm not sure if it's a good idea. What do you recommend?

Unsure in Dallas

Dear Unsure,

Investing is a great idea if you have three years or more time horizon. Stocks are not recommended in the short run for beginning investors (or even experienced investors.) The price fluctuations up and down can be severe and should you need that money in a down period -- you're stuck!

Here's two ideas:

Try three mutual funds. Pick one with large company US stocks, one with small/mid company stocks and one with large international stocks. With these three funds, you are diversified and you can let the professionals worry about the day to day stuff. To choose the funds, either go to a recommended broker or go to your library and seek out the Morningstar reports, which analyze mutual funds.

Don't take stock tips without checking them out thoroughly. (I can't tell you how many investors have worthless securities in their account because of ridiculous stock tips they acted on.) Use high quality resources to help you select the individual stocks. Value Line is a resource at the library which gives balance sheet info on many companies. There are a lot of Internet resources -- Smartmoney.com and Cnbc.com, for example, which give recent history info.

You have to know what you are buying. I'll repeat it because it's important: Don't take stock tips without checking them out thoroughly. Read Peter Lynch's updated book One Up On Wall Street. You may want to stick to the tried and true stuff with your important money. Prepare to spend a lot of time if you want a successful and diversified portfolio.

P.S. Don't take stock tips without checking them out thoroughly. (Have I said that enough?) Good luck, future millionaires!