I am not a qualified investment advisor and you should not take anything I say without doing your own due diligence - but I will tell you what I am doing, or moves close to what I am doing.

I believe investing is good for a young man as long as you are investing more into your relationship with God than you are directly investing into the accumulation of wealth. Even so, it is good to save and prepare for the ability to care for a family, for ministry and for the poor.

At the time of writing (4th August 2007) the financial markets are in turmoil. A lot of American banks, hedge funds and homebuilders are likely to go down. Maybe hundreds of thousands of people will be wiped out financially. I have bought a fund with ticker SKF which went up 7% yesterday and may go a lot higher. It works by shorting these banks and institutions that have been taking on these dodgy loans and so on. A good investment could be to buy silver bullion and just hold it. Silver is very underpriced at the moment in my view. Buying the ETF with ticker SLV could be a good substitute for real silver for now. But you can never be 100% sure.

Once you have saved enough to put a 20% deposit on a house, prices may have crashed to the point where there are true good deals out there again. I wouldn't rush to buy a house or apartment now. Wait until they become cheap again. They will become cheap when it becomes very hard to get a loan.
If you can finance all the expenses with the rent and people are moving into the area its a good buy in all likelihood. Otherwise, it has more risk. Real estate is NORMALLY a safer and better way to build wealth than buying shares in companies. I would not buy real estate in America for another year at least though.

Invest in your own financial education also, unless God tells you not to. That can save you from a lot of painful mistakes later on.