You invest pretty much the same way in a 401k as you do on your own. You add in money and then pick the funds you want to invest in.

• Read the FAQ on investing
• Open a IRA (either roth or traditional, probably Roth for you) with someone like Vanguard, Fidelity, Charles Schwab. I use fidelity, I love their customer support.
• Pick some investment, typically index funds to invest in. I would recommend something like FZROX to start with. It is easy and pretty much a set and forget it.
• As you get more comfortable read up on 3 fund portfolio.

Basically treat this as if you are moving into the apartment and signing the lease by yourself. Same consequences. Shouldn't have any affect on you as long as your sibling pays and doesn't owe anything to them at the end.

Have your parents add you as an authorized user to one of their cards. That is the fastest way to build up your credit.

>why should I be required to pay a company I never entered into an agreement with?

Because the purchased the loan from the xyz bank. You can agree not to pay ABC Collection and it would be the same effect as not paying xyz bank.

List to /u/wickedkittylitter he speaks the truth.

You should be finding index funds with very low fees. Vanguards S&P index fund it .04% Fidelity I know has some fee free ones. No need to give your money away at .89%

So you want to NOT buy stocks when they are low? Your plan is to wait until stocks go up and then start buying into the market?

Stopping contributing may make sense to pay down debt, but don't try to time the market.

Before you do anything else freeze your credit report.

Note: everyone should freeze their credit report, no reason not to.

Just ignore utilization as an issue unless you are going to be applying for a big loan (car/house) in the next few months. Then get your utilization low for that period of time.