Investment advice needed
 

I've been working this summer and have some extra cash that I won't need during school this year, about a thousand dollars. I'm looking to travel when I do graduate in three years, so rather than go in debt then, I'd rather save this money, and use it then. Any ideas on investing it for three years?

It depends on your risk tolerance. If you have low risk tolerance, go with something like an Asset Allocation fund. They are invested in stocks, but also with a significant portion of bonds, with are a more stable return. If you have more tolerance for risk, look for a Diversified Equity fund - something that just has stocks, but the stocks are in several different segments. The segements of the market represented can include large cap, mid cap, and small cap, indexes, international growth, etc.

You can go with some other strategy with greater or less risk, but one of these might be a good place to start. Do some homework at one of these sites disigned to help investors research funds, for example;
http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/...x.html?src=mwy
https://www.wellsfargo.com/investing/mutual_funds/
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/data?pid=mutualfunds

Or for a completely different approach, go buy some weed and sell it on campus. JK, of course.

Hmmm...weed. I've been looking into some mutual funds since your post, and I think I see some that are a little more volatile, but still attractive. Thanks.

In addition to mutual funds, there are ETFs and Index Funds.

The Wall Street Journal recently posted a brief article regarding successful, low-fee, low-minimum equity funds.

From article:

This article was in Tuesday, August 15th's Personal Journal (D) section. I highly recommend checking it out, as they include 3 and 5 year gains for each fund, as well as expense ratios and minimum investment figures (generally $500-1000).