Regular savings - help for an amateur, please!

Charlton_King

jimjames wrote: »

It might be a slightly side point but nothing so far has mentioned other options. Do you need all your money to be in cash or is it worth looking at other investment options for the money? The sorts of amounts would fit inside the new £20k S&S ISA limit and mean you only need to bother with one place for money.

The problem would be that in retirement I don't want to risk the 'value of our investment going down'! If you know of a situation where that is guaranteed to be off the agenda, do let me know. Sorry, that isn't intended as sarcasm, just real interest.

jimjames

Charlton_King wrote: »

The problem would be that in retirement I don't want to risk the 'value of our investment going down'! If you know of a situation where that is guaranteed to be off the agenda, do let me know. Sorry, that isn't intended as sarcasm, just real interest.

There was no mention of retirement initially and I wasn't expecting a free income of £2000pm to be someone in retirement! It might change a little depending on ages. If you have no investments at all and are early 60s then potentially you could have 25 years of retirement ahead. If that's the case then you are pretty much guaranteed that your cash savings will go down in value due to inflation. Investments can go down as well as up but over the long term should comfortably beat inflation.

I think for most people there is a case for having some investments, what proportion of your money that is will depend on various factors, age and risk as well as what other money/income you have are some of them.