Unfortunately, investing 101 is not a mandatory class for most people. If you’re not particularly interested in finance, you can cruise through high school, college, and even the beginning of your adult life with little understanding of the subject. One day, it hits you that you need to start building the future you’ve always wanted for your retirement to look like it does in your dreams.  

We tend to pay an awful lot of attention to investment returns. Mostly, I suppose, because they are in our faces all the time. Turn on the television, listen to the radio, pick-up the newspaper, even our smart phones have applications to keep us continuously abreast of the latest valuation placed by Wall Street traders on a basket of thirty stocks we know as the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). But what does today's valuation have to do with our lives, and should it make or break our day?