You must plan for them and save money to make them a reality. I think Valentine's Day is a good time to sit down and make a list of your dreams, even the ones that seem unattainable. Why not have each partner list their top three dreams. Then go out for a Valentine's dinner and talk them over. That's a question I haven't heard for a while, and it shows that someone is getting serious about learning the terminology of investing.
Beta is one of the tools of modern portfolio theory.
So a stock or fund with a beta of 1.5 would be 50 percent more volatile than the market. That means you could expect it to go up 50 percent more when the market goes up and down 50 percent more when the market goes down. Likewise, a fund with a beta of .75 is less volatile than the market. In an up market, you can expect this stock to gain 25 percent less than the overall market. In a down market, it'll lose 25 percent less.