At Yahoo I answered this question: How to become an investor?

Get a Schwab brokerage account and Schwab checking account. All this can be done on a computer. You can buy and sell shares without ever wasting your time talking to a human. 

There are two ways to invest in the stock market. One way is called gambling and it almost never works. This is when you buy shares of a corporation hoping that shares increase in value so you can sell and make a profit. The idea works some of the time but if you keep doing this eventually you will be wiped out. 

The 2nd way to invest in the stock market is not gambling at all. You buy shares of rock-solid corporations that have a very long history of raising the dividend every year. If the shares go up in value or go down, you don't care because you are going to own these shares for the rest of your life. You're only interested in the dividend income which will grow every year. Until and even after you retire you should use all or most of the dividend income to buy more shares, which is another way to increase your income. Every time you accumulate some cash use it to buy more safe dividend paying shares, which is the 3rd way you can increase your income. 

Never touch the principle. In other words never sell any shares. The only exception is when a corporation says they're going to cut the dividend. Then immediately sell everything and never invest in that corporation again. But you will never have to do that if you are very careful about what you buy. 

An excellent example of a corporation with a very long history of very generous annual increases in the dividend is Philip Morris International Inc., stock symbol PM. They raise the dividend every year and their dividend is extremely safe. An excellent investment you can keep for the rest of your life. 

By never selling anything you can be sure you will have a dividend income no matter how long you live. 

From another answer: "Fund managers make the decisions for you." 

And those fund managers will help themselves to some of your investment income. Their customers are suckers.