<human>: I live in New York, but manage to keep my expenses pretty low. I'm moving into a new place with my partner and my half of the rent shouldn't be more than $750. I'm not much into eating at restaurants and I don't spend too much at bars, so my total expenses can probably be rounded to $1000/month. I'm sure I could find a nice 100K job when I graduate in 4 years, but I'm hoping to find a startup idea I really believe in to invest some money in it (once I graduate around 2018).

Right now I'm looking to just safely invest my money to grow with inflation. I have no illusions about being able to beat the stock market and just want a low risk, diversified portfolio. Does anyone have advice on how to go about this for someone with my finances?

One more thing: my partner made some credit card-based mistakes in the past and now has ~$3,000 in debt. Now he's slowly but steadily paying it off and is always great with paying his fair share of things. If we're still together after a while, I wouldn't mind paying off his debt. I'm sure he's paying horrible interest rates and hurting his credit score. Does anyone have experience with situations like this? it seems silly for him to struggle while I have money sitting around if we'll eventually be entangling finances anyway. All information would be appreciated.

Give me the gist of the text in a nutshell
<bot>: What are the concrete steps I need to create a safe investment which just follows inflation/the market (not sure what the right term is). Links would be very helpful.