2. Learning this stuff is easy, but you do have to learn it.

Over the next decade, you're probably going to buy cars, pay tuition, receive a regular salary, manage home mortgages, decipher insurance policies (ack!), and probably suffer through at least one drudging meeting with a financial advisor. Some things, like tax returns, are going to seem so complicated and boring and impossible to master that you'll want to just hand them over to a professional. That may be fine for your tax return (at a fair price!), but history has shown that it's not fine for your investments.

Wall Street is chock full of financial professionals who would love to manage your money for you -- perhaps through a mutual fund, for example. But a smart fellow named Fred Schwed asked an important question many years ago: "Where are the customers' yachts?" Think about this. You and your friends fork over your life savings into the hands of money managers, who -- after substantial fees -- end up living in ritzy houses and snoozing days away on their yachts. That's not you on the high seas - it's the managers. Something went wrong there. Something really went wrong, especially considering that according to Lipper Analytical Services more than 91% of all mutual funds lost to the market's average return over the past five years! Indeed, where are the customers' yachts?

This is why there are Fools across the country taking control of their own financial destinies, through books and online communication. Why leave something as vital and as all-important as your future security in the hands of someone else... especially when, with a little learning, you can outperform the professionals? Odd as it may seem, investing and money management isn't even terribly difficult. If you can add, subtract, multiply, divide, and calculate percentages, you already have many of the skills you'll need.

In case you're still not convinced, here's an example. Coca-Cola stock has risen at an annual rate of 16.6% per year since the company sold shares to the public in 1919. This has proven to be one of the most successful U.S. investments over the past ten years, thirty years, fifty years, and seventy years. Coca-Cola just keeps on churning out caramelized carbonated corn syrup to enthusiastic soda pop drinkers across the planet. Now, let's run some simple numbers on what would've happened if someone in your family invested $1,000 in the company back in 1919 and never sold. What would that investment be worth today?

A simple but inefficient way to do the calculation is to multiply $1,000 times 1.166 and just hit the return button on your calculator 79 times. A more complex but more efficient process is to enter 1.166 on your calculator, then click x^y, then type 79. Then multiply the result by $1,000. Either way, you'll come up with, yep, $185.9 million. Unthinkable?! We agree. An investment in a company that we all know, and that many of us love, has turned a $1,000 investment into more than $180 million over the past 79 years. We hope the lesson of saving a little money and investing it in great companies isn't lost on you now. (And if it wasn't lost on one of your ancestors and you have inherited those shares, let us hear from you at FoolPersonals@fool.com.)

The decisions you make about your money will determine whether you can sail the Indian Ocean when you're forty-two, quit your job to start a women's clothing store at thirty-five, afford to put all six of your children through college, or take a year off from daily doings to write a book on Mark Twain. You need, at the very least, to learn the basics about managing your money. You might as well begin learning now.

Step 3: Plastic can kill