You might be surprised.

All the ideas above are excellent, especially the calls for a "mini start up"...but I'm surprised to hear such a push for stocks.While investing in stocks in certainly a very common way to get people involved in investment, I'd argue that stocks are very easy to "tune out" rather than actively learn from.

Anytime you do, there's additional cost and surprises especially if there are required inspections.

We got a similar  call, from a shocked contractor that our copper pipes were stolen... the week we hired contractors.. but surprisingly weren't stolen the 4 years the house was vacant?  

Actually, and this comes as a surprise to some, there's only one brief mention of smoke detector in the Chicago RLTO.  

The IRS (pub 527) is not very clear (surprise) on this considering how common a scenario it is.Thanks in advance!

(I had a leak and wanted to turn off the house water, one emergency plumber charged $125 to show up and told me it was $300 more to turn off the water until my normal handyman or the home services co could get there and $900 to fix it.

You don't want to pay for a surprise 10-20k roof or 4k water heater out of pocket.

Before you even start investing:Do you have an emergency fund minimum 3 months, preferably 6 such that if the wheels came off everything you could survive?  

I didn't receive a response, so I followed up after a week, and to my surprise the founding partner at the firm sent an interesting reply, including this sentence--"If you would be willing to work as an independent contractor agent on 100% commission and learn as you go, I would be willing to speak with you."