advice please re saving/investing

Hester

nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

cheerfulcat

Hi, Hester,

The cash ( including bonds )/shares ratio is usually determined by a formula which is 100 minus your age = proportion you should have in shares.So in your case, 70%-ish in shares. Generally speaking, shares should be seen as a long-term investment; if you are going to need the money soon it's usually more advisable to have it in cash. It's not nice to be a forced seller of shares, especially if they are going through a bad patch!

As far as your pension is concerned, are you aware that even as a non-earner you can put £2800-ish into a personal pension, topped up to £3600 by HMG? You can go the stakeholder route ( buying a fund ) or you can open a Self Invested Personal Pension ( SIPP ) with an online broker and choose your own investments. I have used both Hargreaves Lansdown and Squaregain ( used to be comdirect ). Squaregain works out cheaper of the two.

The cheapest possible exposure to shares ( remember, the cheaper it is, the more of your money goes into the actual investment ) is through an Exchange Traded Fund, which is basically an index tracker. Bearing in mind the fact that most actively managed funds fail to outperform the index to which they are benchmarked, a tracker is an attractive option.

http://www.ishares.net/index.do

HTH

Cheerfulcat

Edit: You can buy ETFs ( ishares ) through a normal broker