Congratulations. As someone who is many years ahead of you, I'll say that you are on the right track. When you hit your 60's, you'll thank yourself for sticking with the program. A significant percentage of gains in the S&P are due to dividend distributions, reinvested. Over time it really adds up...so long as you remain invested, don't get too aggressive, and don't try to time the market. And don't invest only for yield. Remember that there is no free ride, and a stock that is offering an extreme yield may not be a stock you want to be holding. IMO, this is a great time to start your program, as many thousands of boomers are retiring, looking for yield, which will put a good foundation under blue chip, dividend paying companies.
Norton, I think you are getting some good advice from the others here and I congratulate you for even thinking about that far into the future. I imagine that fact alone puts you above 99% of the people just starting out. I would also suggest looking into an IRA account and I don't know if you mentioned if you can invest in a 401K or similar at your company? If so, try to at least invest the amount to where the company matches if they do. Otherwise, maximize the IRA first, then consider 401K contributions. Overall though I think you are on the right track, but please remember to remain diversified and don't put too much for example into REITs or just generally high yielders. JJacksET4
You may also want to Google a guy named Ray Lucia. He has some pretty informative stuff regarding financial planning and there's usually interesting articles posted on his website. He has a couple of books and a daily radio show, but you can stream it for free and probably find some of his books at your local library. He doesn't spend a lot of time on the actual investment process (i.e: which stock should I buy, etc) and doesn't have a high opinion of trading in general, but there is some good stuff there.