People think a house is an asset. A house is a liability until you sell it and make money on it. We are the first generation to get screwed with home ownership. Personally, I'm looking at a 50% loss on my house, up from a 75% loss on it. Heck, the bank is taking the loss, not me.
Rental properties will always be worthwhile, especially now that many people can't 'afford' to buy a house. I quote afford because they may have bad credit, laws limiting, etc, while financially able.
International stocks are a bit weaker than US stocks. I invest lightly in some with my 401k and do so-so with it.
A lot of people like Large Cap stocks, I prefer Small. They're riskier and the reward is far better. The loss is generally small.
Dog, for you though. If you're afraid to lose your money, you haven't done your homework yet. Pick a stock, watch it for 3 months, 6 months, and make your predictions. See where you end up, understand why it went up/down/stayed the same. Mutual funds are always recommended but I prefer highly aggressive investing since I'm younger and can afford to take a loss should it happen.
I started off with $1500 investing. I picked up stocks all under $10. Anything under $5 is considered a Penny stock - don't let the name fool you. Anything that drops below $2/share (I think it was $2, maybe $1) falls off the DOW and you're SOL. Keep that in mind. I made a healthy amount off Ford (F), Human Genome Sciences (HGSI), Lazy-Boy (LZB), Delta (forgot the symbol), Citicard (C), and a coulpe others.
High volume means more people are buying/selling so you're safer in my opinion. Low volume means people aren't selling/buying that often so you could be stuck with a loss for a while until someone is buying. Larger stocks, people might be trading half a million shares for $.02 per share. Do the math, you're looking at a health sum of money gained for a small transaction.
Grab a few stocks, watch them. Read about the company, follow their press releases.. it might as well become a second job. When I was investing regularly, I spent about 15-20 hours a week following my companies. I found this little $2.43 per share stock called HGSI. I took a risk on them and bought 500 shares. One day I woke up and the stock went from $2.xx to $14 overnight. A few days later, $18.. I sold. 9x my money, no way was I going to get greedy. Stock went up to $33/share before dropping back down.
First Solar was a solid bet for a while. It was too rich for my blood starting at $22/share, going up to $311/share within a year.
Keep in mind, you'll make more based on buying more shares. If you buy 1 share at $100, or 100 shares at $1, and the price goes up $.01, the share share is worth $100.01, while the 100 shares are worth $101.