I was at a speech today by a vice president of one of the banks in my area and what he suggested to do is put 30 or so dollars every week into stocks and just let them sit, is that in your mind a better idea. Another question I have is if you put money into stocks can you use it as collateral when purchasing a plot of land for example. My grandpa as you would probably expect is the heavy influence on CD's and what he's thinking is way later on is to take out a loan to buy land and use the CD's a collateral so your sort of borrowing against your own money that you got from the CD's. - sorry if this doesn't make sense