I felt it was essential to begin this series with asking the age-old question of "why?" Everyone's answer will be different which is exactly why I feel so strongly that you need to identify this answer before embarking on any sort of investing journey. When you think about it, whether the investing is in yourself, a stock, a house, or your time, the goal is to improve and/or gain something worthwhile from your investment activities.
In terms of your money, we invest to potentially have more wealth or in better terms, purchasing power. I like this term because of that nasty little thing called inflation. You can have more money but if inflation is high then your purchasing power may not increase and, in some circumstances, may even decrease.
So by investing we aim to improve our financial standing and for most people, to get to the point where we have enough so we don't need to work for the rest of our projected lives after retirement (yes, you kind of have to project when you will die. Isn't investing fun?).
So we want to accumulate enough purchasing power to retire and pay our bills for the rest of our life. Next we will move on to how increase that purchasing power starting with the name we are all familiar with; STOCKS.