How to make £40k work???

jimjames

stumblingtrout wrote: »

Thanks for the reply.
I'm willing to take some risk, but I can't risk losing the whole amount. The £40k is set aside to enable us to buy a bigger house after we are married and thinking about starting a family, so obviously my savings are crucial in us being able to afford to do that.

So you suggest I put a larger proportion of funds in my Stocks & Shares account? I have £1,000 in a high risk Smaller Companies fund and it's currently sitting at £1,222 less than a year later (though appreciating that could go up or down each day)

If the money is to buy a house then depending on when you are aiming to buy stock market investments may not be suitable.

However you certainly don't have to put it all in such risky funds. Going from cash at one extreme to high risk funds at the other with nothing in between isn't a balanced portfolio. With most funds it is highly unlikely that you would ever lose the whole amount unless it is an extremely high risk fund. Even during the worst of the 2008/9 market crash the maximum drop was around 50% for the main FTSE index.