hopefully someone more knowledgeable will give you an answer but since Im here Ill tell ya what I know.

First thing is any computer on the internet should have a firewall. A firewall stops people from getting in your computer while your online. Firewalls should also stop trojans from letting people get in. I use zonealarm its free dont know if its the best but a lot of people I know use it. http://www.zonealarm.com

Some virus scanners wont get rid of trojans, and will only detect them while they are in use. you can download a trojan remover just do a google search “trojan remover” or something

Finally make sure your virus scanners are up to date. not sure how good mcaffee is I use Normans cause thats what we have at work and its pretty good.

In summation make sure you have a good virus scanner that is regularily updated or set to do the automatic updates, And a firewall program, if you are on the internet.

I also have adaware http://www.lavasoft.de on my machine cause theres a lot of crap on the interent and anytime my browser starts acting wierd I run the adaware program and you’ll find all these nasty little things installed on your machine from nasty websites.

hope that helps and is not too confusing it’s late and I need to go home and sleep.

Tom

ahh yeh the simple years, uni is like the holiday before life starts.

Well I agree wholeheartedly with the term deposit suggestion I remmber I had an excell spreadsheet I used to calculate how much money I was making passively and how much I could make by saving that extra dollar a week etc. Save like crazy its great, and when you have a pasive income coming in, you can reward yourself with spending part of your profits and keep reinvesting the the rest back into your savings.

I was lucky and unlucky, to have had a steady partner thru the uni years, so we were able to get a duplex and rent of one room and split the other half of the rent by sharing a room between two. The unlucky part was my partner never undestood what savings was about and took the money as play thing. A car and a computer later and we were back to square one.

You could even maybe add more profit by renting a cheap share house and charging most of the rent to the other tennants. thats if your renting and not living at home. I spose you could do it without needing to be one of the tennants, by being immersed in uni students, you may find an opportunity to help students who are looking for accomodation.

Having a job is important too. You never appreciate the value of money till your earning it yourself.

So once you’ve got a healthy savings building up for your first investment. the next step is to never touch it and buy your car, computer, white goods everything you want through personal loans, etc you think its better to just whip $800 dollars out of your bank to buy something when in actual fact its a lot better to get a small loan. start of small and get yourself a good credit rating. Banks then have proof you are a good creditor.

When its time to get the big loans for your first car etc, you’ve already established a good credit rating and will find it a lot easier to loan money. And when it comes time to go for your first home loan you have the savings account and your credit history, and any assets to help you.

hope parts of this make sense.

Tom