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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - I'm a 44-year-old woman who lives paycheck to paycheck in a low-paying job. I have no savings and bad credit. I want to learn how to invest to become financially wealthy. Where do I go for help?

-- Donna R., Ashley, PA

There are plenty of self-help gurus out there willing to take your money for some course or program designed to make you wealthy by (choose one: buying real estate with little or no money down, trading commodities, buying and selling stocks online, etc.).

But if you follow this approach, I think the best that will happen is that you'll lose whatever money you paid for the course or the program -- a few hundred bucks or more -- and the worst that could happen is that you'll squander whatever money you have on high-risk ventures with a low probability of success.

So let's skip that route and turn to the only person who can really help you in this situation: you.

The first thing you've got to do is set some realistic near-term goals. Becoming "financially wealthy" may be a perfectly fine aim to shoot for in the long-term. But if you have no savings and lousy credit and you're not earning very much money, then I'd say for now at least, your primary goal should be to achieve at least a bit of financial security.

And the way to do that is by building up your savings. You need some sort of rainy-day fund or savings cushion that you can fall back on in emergencies.

Note that I said "emergencies." This is money that you should dip into only when there's no other way to buy necessities. It's not a savings fund you can dip into when you want to buy a new big-screen TV or the latest iPod. And it's not a stash you can tap when you want to take a vacation.

After you've created your emergency fund, you may want to set up a separate savings account for vacations and the like, but you can worry about that later.

For now, though, you want to begin squirreling away about three months or so of living expenses in a very secure investment such as a money-market fund or a bank savings account. The idea here isn't that this money is going to make you wealthy. We'll get to that in a minute. The goal with this emergency fund is that you'll have a stash you know you can depend on whenever you truly need it. So preservation of principal is more important than the rate of return you earn.

Once you've got your emergency stash together, you can start thinking about building wealth. To do that, you've not only got to continue saving on a regular basis, you've also got to be willing to take a bit more risk with your money.

I'm not talking about foolish risks, like betting everything on some ridiculous online trading scheme or buying frozen pork bellies in hopes of making a killing in the commodities market. I'm talking about "prudent" risks: investing in a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds designed to provide long-term growth.

There are any number of ways to do this. But for a novice like yourself, investing in mutual funds is the best route. And to keep things really simple, I suggest you consider a specific type of mutual fund known as a target retirement fund.

When you invest in this type of fund, you essentially get a ready-make mix of stocks and bonds that's appropriate for someone your age. What's more, that mix changes over time to become more conservative as you approach retirement.

That's not to say you can't experience short-term setbacks in these types of funds. You can (as you can with any investment involving stocks and bonds). But your aim with the money you invest in this type of fund should be to ignore and short-term ups and downs and hold on for the long-term.

So while your emergency fund provides safety and security, this other fund -- call it your Wealth Building Fund, if you like -- generates long-term growth so that you'll have resources you can draw on later in life, and particularly in retirement.

For more on how mutual funds work, I suggest you check out our MONEY 101 lesson on mutual funds and for details on the target retirement funds I mentioned, click here.

This entire program hinges on you being able to save on a regular basis. If you spend all you earn, there's no way you'll accumulate an emergency fund and no way you'll create a Wealth Building fund. So I recommend that you come up with some system that works for you to put away money on a regular basis.

In my experience, the best way to do this is to put your savings on auto-pilot -- that is, have the money go into savings without it having to go through your hands first.

If your employer offers a 401(k) or other savings plan, you should definitely sign up for it. (Besides the regular savings, you'll get a tax break for contributing to the 401(k), and your employer may also kick in free money in the form of company matching funds.)

If your employer doesn't offer such a plan, then consider having money automatically transferred from your checking account each month into a mutual fund. (You can start with a money market fund until your savings cushion is complete and then switch to a target or other fund that shoots for higher returns.) Most major fund companies offer this sort of arrangement.

As to how much to set aside in your 401(k) or through automatic transfers, that's a decision you'll have to make based on your circumstances. I'd recommend starting with an amount you know you can handle -- say, 5 percent of your take-home pay -- and then try to increase it from time to time.

For help with creating a budget, click here. You may find this process difficult at first if you've never been a consistent saver. But once your savings start to build, you'll see the value of this approach.

One final thing: in addition to the saving and investing part of the wealth-building equation, you'll want to do whatever you can to earn more, whether it's just looking around for better jobs or even getting some job training so you can qualify for more lucrative positions. The more you earn, the more you should be able to save and invest, and the more wealth you should be able to accumulate over your lifetime (although you'll have to be careful not to simply eat up salary increases with increased spending, as many people do).

So there's your plan. It will take discipline and a bit of effort on your part. And it's certainly not going to make you rich overnight. To be honest, it may not make you rich at all.

But if you follow this strategy, you at least have a very good shot at creating some financial security so, rich or not, you can enjoy life a little more both now and in retirement.

Walter Updegrave is a senior editor at MONEY Magazine and is the author of "We're Not in Kansas Anymore: Strategies for Retiring Rich in a Totally Changed World."