An investment plan is comprised of several techniques and plans to investment. This plan is something like you have to invest money in regular intervals with minimum amount (e.g. monthly interval with $100 as minimum amount). This plan usually gets matured after 3 to 5 years of tenure. After which you will get the amount with profit or loss depends on market condition at that time(maturity tie). Some plans do come with sum assured amount. It does not matter what is the condition of market it will certainly provide you sum assured amount. So prior investing in mutual funds or insurance plans you should closely watch the market or go through the history of company whose shares you are going to invest in. Some companies do all this kind planing and investments on your behalf but they take a huge fees for doing so. So safer bet is always have third party involved in investments as they are experienced and keep monitoring the market for 24 hours for you, and give you feedback or ideas time to time, but require fees which is also called brokerage. These plans also come with 3 brackets namely, high risk high returns(profit), Medium risk and returns, low risk and low returns. So while investing one should invest in brackets to all these three flavors of investment fund. Like $100 can be invested like 15% in 1st one, 60 % in middle one 25 % in last one. This makes your investment to be on the safer side but with good returns as well. investment