That is a good strategy, as long as you can find people to pay for those skills in the future. So you'd have to pick the right area. The general strategy I fo

That is a good strategy, as long as you can find people to pay for those skills in the future. So you'd have to pick the right area. The general strategy I follow is to invest in things that produce more things (skills being one of them). For example, if you invest in something like gold, it doesn't produce anything -- your only hope is that someone down the road will buy it from you for more than you paid for it. For company stocks, I like to pick ones that have a regular history of paying dividends (even if their value isn't going up that much), instead of non-dividend stocks that only increase in value. Another example: you can buy real estate, and rent it out. While technically not producing more stuff, it still gives you income outside of normal appreciation. The trap is that you need to be able to rent it out for more than what taxes, maintenance, and potentially interest costs you.