What is an Investment?                                                    
Investing is the action of appreciating (growing) the value of an asset without taking a lot of risk in the process. Putting your money into a savings account is an investment, buying 100 shares of a company, holding the stocks for more than a few years is an investment and the best part of it is that investing doesn't take a lot of money to get started. 

What is Liquid Assets?                                                       
An asset is considered liquid when it can be converted to cash without losing much (if any) of its value. Therefore, cash is the most liquid asset possible If you've got cash, then you can buy goods or services as soon as you get to a store. 
A checking account is also a liquid asset, but it isn't as liquid as cash. With a checking account you've got to cash a check or visit an ATM, or use a debit card. Either way, there are a few extra steps involved in using your checking account to buy goods or services. 
Savings accounts, money market accounts, and other short-term investments are also considered liquid assets. 
Assets that are not close to being defined as liquid assets are often called fixed assets. Your home is a good example of a fixed (non-liquid) asset. It takes time to convert a home into cash. Real Estate, cars, and other "property" are also fixed assets. 

Learn about Annuities?                                                      
Annuities are the opposite of life insurance in that they stop paying a benefit at death. The way annuities work is that a company (often an insurance company) will take a lump sum of money and pay it out in installments until death Annuities protect against financial loss from living too long, while life insurance protects against financial loss from dying too soon. 
Why would someone want to do this? Well, since people are living longer, there is a danger of living longer than your retirement savings can provide. An annuity keeps on paying, so the annuitant (person receiving payments) has a guaranteed source of income, and doesn't need to fear running out of money.Why would a company want to do this? The catch is the company stops paying when the annuitant dies, and keeps any money left over.Now if that doesn't apeal to you at all, you can choose a common annuity option which will continue paying income to a secondary annutant (spouse or kids). Or you can set up the annuity to pay for a specified number of years. Since these methods reduce the chances that the insurance company will make a big profit, the monthly income payments will be less than if it were a standard annuity. Insurance companies are big into annuities because mortality estimates are how a company determines how much income to pay out. The longer an annuitant may live, the smaller the payments would be. 

Learn about Savings Accounts!                                        
Savings accounts are storage places for funds. Money stored in a savings accounts can generally be accesses fairly easy. Most banks offer customers access to their savings through ATM machines. Because of this easy access, savings accounts rates offered by banks are not that high. Savings rates may only be one percentage point higher than checking rates, and they are rarely higher than the inflation rate. 
Savings accounts are good for storing money on a short-term basis, in preparation for transfering that money to long term holdings or for making a large purchase in the next few months. 
Let's say you want to buy into a stock mutual fund (long-term investment), but you don't have the money for the required initial investment. A good idea is to save money into your savings account over the next few months until you build up enough for the initial investment.