As a group of people who have thought a lot about their money I'm interested to know where you have it invested - I guess for most of you it's not in property, so presumably you have some other investments? I don't own property myself, I am currently renting mostly because it is more convenient for me not to commit to an area for the long term. Plus at the moment it's cheaper to rent than be a FTB. With no mortgage/loans I have some savings with which I stick to a general rule of 75% in cash and 25% in investment funds.

What looks good to you for a place to put this 'riskier' 25% of my money? Do you think there is any value to be had in buying now in the current market conditions?

GOLDand silver, imo

Ok. No-one else? Where is your money if not in property?

My balls have shrunk over the last two years, i.e No investing ( Nothing too risky ) but plenty of cash, just spreading it about and avoiding more than 35k in any one place. I did like fixed bonds but will evaluate in September when they all fruit. Keeping most uk based.
Before NR I happily stuck 60k in A&L on a fixed bond for one year and I will now be shitting a brick until October. Great rate but it`s squeaky bum time.
Why did it have to be A&L I stuck the biggest single amount in.
To be honest I did not realise how thick I actually was with money, good at making money but I wish I found this site 2 years ago.

I am Learning very quickly it must be said. I hope not the hard way!!!

G`luck

It sounds like you might be needing this money to buy a property in the next couple of years, so I'd go for something boring, like short-term bonds, (premium bonds if you're a high rate tax payer), or NSandI bonds. Have you utilised your ISA allowance for this year?

Despite what people might tell you gold and silver are not one-way bets. Also, avoid the stock market, as your timescale isn't good enough from the sounds of it.

Now that`s what I call good advice muttley.



Now if you had said Gold instead of GOLD I may have take your advice.

In the advertising world your GOLD would have not been acceptable.

And you lot don`t ramp, the mind boggles.

Yes I'd like to get a property at a good price within the next few years, and am saving up in order to reduce my mortgage. I'm hoping for and expecting a drop in property prices over the next few years, which fortunately will coincide with my desire to buy. (Up until this point renting has actually suited me fine because I move around a lot).

I use up my ISA allowance each year. After March I shall be using my allowance for next year and investing in something other than a savings account. The length of time Im likely to want to see a return from this investment is a couple of years.

Would I be crazy to think that now is a good buy opportunity for a uk financials fund when Im looking for a return 2 or 3 years from now?

Just appreciate the risk. 2-3 years is not very long if the investment takes a dip. You might not have enough time to recover the loss.

i'm not sure what you mean by that. if you mean that it was not subtle enough or
would fall foul of some AA regs then you are sadly mistaken - and especially on the
first count. the advertising industry are the people who gave you pop-ups, eyeblasters
and now prerolls - taking every opportunity they possibly can to interrupt you and simply
SHOUT a message or proposition at you.

(i do hope this is what you meant and that this turns into one of those threads where
two posters compare the size of their balls by arguing obscure points in relation to their
area of specialism)

Staying liquid, i.e. your 75% cash allocation sounds good. I assume you are getting good interest rates e.g. on-line savings accounts such as First Direct etc etc and bearing in mind the £35k 'protection' limit per institution.

For the 25%, or rather a smaller part of it , why not consider buying shares in some of the major UK banks ? esp. after the next bad news hits the media - (I'm thinking post the Q1 results for the new business year). True they have already seen very considerable falls in share price, but unless the whole UK banking sector is going to fail I would gamble that 2-3 years down the line the share prices will have recovered quite significantly, even if not to early 2007 values.

With the major banks there is also the possibility of dividend payments, often twice per year.

It's a higher risk choice for sure, but I would be amazed if the share prices, for example HBOS, Barclays, haven't gained at least 20% by 2010.

there's a growing band of people waking up to silver as an investment. I'm unashamedly bullish on silver for the following reasons:

1) demand has outstripped supply every year of the last 15 - and for at least 60 years on average.
2) most if not all government inventories are now depleted.
3) the list of industrial uses grows (including solar panels), now more than making up for the loss from photography.
4) silver is both a precious and a base metal, meaning it's an inflation hedge and necessary for industry.
5) in many industrial applications there is no alternative - eg mirrors.
6) although silver has gone up over the past few years, the rise has been so slow (relatively) over the past few decades because there was always more in government inventories as an artificial supply. now this has gone, the sky's the limit.

I'm sorry i don't know how high silver could go - the recent increase in mining is producing a little more silver than previously, but still not ebough to meet demand.

The market will also accept a price of silver many times its current price - eg if an industrial switch (or mirror etc) costs £2 to produce, with the silver accounting for 2p of that, if the price of silver times by 5 to 10p - noone would notice now paying £2.10 for the switch!

As for how to invest, i'd be split between an etf and holding bullion - there's a lot of concern that the etfs couldn't actually meet their silver committments due to a new short position.

like everyone i've said this to - do your own rsearch via google or anywhere else and the answer is inescapable. Good luck.