Advice needed

DonM

Hi,

As has been mentioned holding a third in shares of one company is a very high risk more but by the same token so is holding the remainder (excluding NS&I certs) in cash.

Firstly, you should consider what you intend to use the money for. You should set aside an amount in easy access accounts (your cash ISAs could do) for any emergencies. Next, you could use term deposit accounts for any big expenditures over the next 1-4 yrs and finally, you could invest the rest.

When investing make sure you maximise your tax shelters. Calculate your profit on your existing shares and sell enough so that you don't pay any tax - £10,900 capital gains allowance this tax year. So if the shares have doubled in value you could sell £21,800 each assuming ownership is transferred for half the shares. The ISA limit is over £11,500 each so use this. You should also be able to transfer existing cash ISAs to share ISA without using any of your current allowance (assuming the rules haven't changed since I left the UK).

As for investments a good option to minimise risk is to diversify. I intend to write an article on this soon but the general principle is diversify for a reason not for the sake of it. By example, investing in lots of UK companies isn't really diversifying your risk. Instead, consider investing over different asset classes (bonds, stocks, commodities, property etc) and regions.

Also concentrate on value of an investment not its cost. Cost is what you pay, value is what you get. Always look at net returns.