Quote from: cactus-pits on October 11, 2013, 07:58:09 PM

thanks guys..Birdy, could you explain a tad but about that? or point me in a direction..?

Sure,
there are two things that make people lose their Btc often:
- loss of the private keys or password to a encrypted wallet / writing down the wrong password
To avoid those, you should have multiple backups (remember the private key is the key to your coins, so any backup will give access to the coins)

- theft most likely due to a trojan/keylogger on your pc or the use of an unsecure online platform

for smaller amounts or day.to.day use I would recommend the online-wallets blockchain.info or inputs.io
for bigger amounts I would recommend using either cold wallets or a paper wallets

Paper wallets are nothing more than the private key to an address written down or printed out on a piece of paper
Best is you don't use a paper wallet address twice

Cold wallets are the private keys (or collection of private keys from local clients like the wallet.dat from bitcoin-qt) saved on offline equipment
This may be an usb stick, a laptop or sd card (or whatever)
Very interesting is the possibility of the Armory Oflline Client that allows you to spend Bitcoin from an offline Pc/laptop