Startup Capital

[SonofJen]

Main Question: How much $$$ is generally needed/recommended to start actively investing?

Background: I'm 26, married, and bought a house a year ago. My wife and I both contribute to our 401k accounts and max out our Roth IRA each year but we have never opened a non-retirement investment account. We have 15 grand that is currently in a 3.15% savings account that I want to start investing with. I've been reading this forum quite frequently and have just begun to read the books and other resources that a lot of you have been so kind to recommend. I'm generally the type of person who enjoys doing his homework so although I'm definitely a "beginner" when it comes to investing, I'm eager to begin the necessary due diligence involved with ramping up my understanding and skill set. One thing I'm wondering though is whether I have enough $$$ to start trading in anything other than index funds or possibly DRIPs? For instance, one post on this site recommended at least 40k to get started. Is that really necessary? One thing I was thinking about was putting my money into an index fund initially (either part of it or all of it) and then doing my homework (i.e. reading and setting up a virtual account) until I feel "ready" to start mixing it up. Even at that point, I imagine I'd only use, or want to use, a percentage of my total funds to pick individual stocks while the rest of my money remains in more conservative, diversified holdings. Is this a decent gameplan to begin with? What I'm especially unclear on, however, are what those percentages should look like. One answer might be 2/3 in index funds (say 5k in one and 5k in another) and 1/3 in individual stocks. But that would mean I'd only be investing 5k in individual stocks, which with the fees, might not make that much sense. In short, I'm ideally looking for some good rules of thumb here, if there are any, or to hear some different opinions on the subject. Thank you in advance for any and all insights you might have.