When it comes to investing, most of the people may think of the size of the amount needed to kick off with an investment. The common perception of investment is "I need a lot of money before I can even think of investment". This statement may not be true as there are always ways to invest if you do not have much money in hand.

Now, if you have $1,000 to start with, where should you put the money?

1. Pay Down and Pay Off Your Non-Mortgage Debts
The first and the wisest way is to pay down your debts, especially credit cards debts. It is unusual for investment returns to beat credit card interest. Therefore, if you have $1,000 in hand, you should think of paying down your debts first, until they are fully paid up.

2. Create Emergency Fund
After you have paid up the non-mortgage debts or you simply do not have debts, then the next step is to create your emergency fund. An emergency fund is served as a back up should something out of your expectation happens, namely lay-off. You need to save up to an optimum level of between 3 to 6 months of your monthly expenditures.

3. Identify Investment Tools
When you have another $1,000 again, start looking for mutual funds to invest. It is not a good idea to invest in individual company's stocks. You need more than 10 stocks in your portfolio to reduce the risks of deficit returns.

4. Select the Funds
How do you select the funds? There are too many funds flooding the market and undeniably some of them are underperformed. So the best way is to follow the fund managers and not the funds. Get a fund manager with high reputation of beating the market consistently. However, also take note that with $1,000 to invest, you may be limited to certain funds with low minimum opening balances.