putting it into stock definitely counts as saving
Anyways, before this goes off topic, I'll explain my reasoning above and contribute more to the thread. (cause business):
Investing in small companies has a greater return, especially if they become successful, but it has a greater risk. (losing the 1k) Since I just had 1k, I'm guessing that I would be able to throw that amount wherever I want. In my opinion, daytrading and stocks is too much of a headache, and I already invest an amount of my salary into long term stock options.
They are a good and "safer" option though, as opposed to investing in a small business. Also, your money isn't sitting idly and will have a higher yield with a low risk, which makes it better than saving it. Therefore, you're technically not saving money but spending money on assets that may increase in value, which is usually the case if people are patient. However, safer options don't have a great return, and are not as fun.
So, I'd rather play around with the amount and invest in something I love and believe in, if I were forced to put it into something. (This means zero risk to me 
so might as well have fun)
Is hard to choose one of these because the answer is: depends of the company.......
If you have any debts to pay and lack knowledge to invest, the most profitable investment, is to pay off some of the debts so the interests stop eating you........
The reliable investment, unless I really believe in and am personally invested in the mission of the small company (unlikely tbh if it's for profit XD)
You could consider it that way, yes, though saving (to my mind) implies safety, too, and stocks are not safe at all. They are close to legalized craps-shooting at worst and playing poker at best. You can lose all your money overnight, and that doesn't sound like saving it.
Government bonds are more safe than company bonds & stock, or so I've heard; if this is relevant to your actual life.
Otherwise, 1 for sure. Way more safe than the second. (Though. You can also just buy a bit of both and thus diversify your investments . . .)
1000 tacos would be awful tempting…
But in reality I’d probably be boring and save it for a rainy day.
That depends. Stocks are volatile, but for a big-name like Microsoft to go under and lose all your investment in it is highly unlikely. You can also invest in mutual funds and ETFs which are a diversified and managed portfolio of stocks, which reduces risk - but also reduces reward.
Anyway, this thread asks the questions far too high level. If you're going to choose a stock long term, it'd best be a large company that's not going to go under and also gives a decent quarterly dividend with the option to auto-reinvest. Choosing a small company you "believe" has a chance at becoming big is very risky for large amounts of money. Look at what happened with Beyond Meat when they had their IPO. They SKYROCKETED from $24/share to nearly $240/share in about a week, and now they're worth under $20/share. People believed they would do well and artificially inflated the stock by rapidly purchasing it at a low cost, then everyone sold for their profits and it came tumbling down. If you got in early and sold, congrats, they were over valued and you got lucky. Unless you have insider information, your belief is not a solid foundation to make an investment. And if you have insider information, trading that stock may be illegal given your circumstances. You're also more likely to day-trade or swing that stock with that kind of information rather than hold it. You're far better off picking an INDUSTRY that is set up to do well (i.e. solar power) and diversify that money amongst stocks, mutual funds and ETFs within that industry. And then sit on it for years (and they better give dividends and capital gains distributions). If we were talking a couple hundred dollars into a small stock, sure I might be willing to do that if the stock is cheap. $1000?
Thanks for coming to my ted talk! 
I've been in the stock market so I know what you're saying. My point was that there's a difference between saving something which implies not putting it at risk of loss, and investing in something for gain which almost always implies risking loss. So, I think it really was a valid rule, in the original post, to hold savings apart from the two investment choices.
The Beyond Meat example is typical of IPOs. Everyone gets pumped about the new company, speculators buy in big which demand runs up the price, then they take the money and run. There's a reverse version when a company is dying, called the "dead cat bounce". Speculators will buy big into the falling price stock, again causing the price to rise. More people pile in, sensing a turn in the company fortunes, only to be left holding the bag when the speculators pull their money & gains out.
Short term stock investing is, as you describe, a form of gambling. There are many professionals in it & you pit yourself against them & Lady Luck. Long term, you have better chances & can rely on slow growth (often at lower risk) of either a company or of the market as a whole. That's why it's smart-ish to invest as early in your working life as possible. Longer time to let compounding of interest & dividends build some wealth.
The difference is expected returns; with gambling the odds are deliberately set up so that the 'casino' wins on average (or if it's just, like, playing poker between friends or something, then the expected return is 0, but people generally don't play against friends with the goal of winning big). There's a reason the casino's still operating, after all.
With investment, there isn't that conflict of interest between you and when you're putting your money; you win iff they win.
I'd say gambling is more akin to insurance, if anything. On average, you'd be better off just saving your money and paying out of pocket for emergencies. Same logic; there's a reason the insurance company is still operating, after all XD
*laughs in homeless-by-choice*
You're right about casino gambling but that's not the only kind of gambling.
In investing, there are 3 players (or teams): you, the business you invested in & the professional stock traders. The latter group is in it for blood & have few scruples. And they win when you lose. It's like having a few card sharks at what you hoped was a card game among friends. That's why it's best not to participate in gambling-like investing (aka short term speculation, daytrading, etc.) unless you can be as smart as the sharks.
People like to make the old joke about insurance being like gambling: you're betting something bad will happen & the company is betting it won't. But it's not really accurate, though there are odds & statistics involved. Both you & they want nothing bad to happen.
I guess the spirit of what I was trying to say was gambling is purely an exchange of value; no value is created. The people playing with you either:
- do it for fun (in which case you all have an equal chance of 'winning', so your expected winnings is 0), or
- do it for profit (in which case they have to 'win' the value from somewhere - namely you, so the only way they can reliably profit is to set things up so that your expected winnings is negative. Hence they act as a 'casino' of sorts.)
The only way your expected winnings could be positive is if you're playing someone who's using a weird method of gifting you money, or something 
(If there are in fact any forms of gambling that falls outside these three possibilities, I'm curious to know XD)
Whereas investing has a chance of creating value, which everyone who put value in splits in some way, which can lead to positive winnings for everyone - which is literally impossible in gambling.
But I guess that's kind of moving the goalposts. All you said was that investing can be just as risky/unsafe as gambling, albeit for different reasons (whereas I assumed you were saying investing is risky for the same reasons gambling was risky). I admittedly know jack about how professional stock traders operate
Agreed! I guess I missed that before.
That's why I didn't go along with my friends (who were also playing the market) in shorting stocks. That's betting on failure & it just didn't feel right to me.
They're not exactly alike but close enough, I guess.
Yeeeh, I'm with most people. Since I do engineering, a lot of my monthly check goes into rent and my bank accounts. I split up two accounts for spending and savings. I guess I could give up some money from my spending account, but it'd definitely go towards a reliable company.
By "reliable", I mean "been around 100 or so years and less likely to die out soon". So something like ComEd, Walgreens -- things like that. When it comes to money, especially MY money, I'm just not a risk taker. Maybe I lose out on opportunities that way, but like...eh, that ain't me.
10 days later
Honestly, if I would have 1000$, I would keep it and try to save a bigger sum of money, because 1000$ is just a very small sum nowadays, you can basically do nothing with it. However, there is a chance that you can get some money in casino. Probably I would put this thousand $ in the casino, but first read some reviews about it on https://casinosanalyzer.com/online-casinos/poland-pol to be sure that I won't get scammed. And maybe I could make some more money from this thousand, but its pretty risky 