In July I will have £20,000. It's a long-story that I won't bore anyone with the details of, all you need to know is I will have a current account with about £20,000 in it.
What should I do with it? Or perhaps even more useful advice would be what should I read so that I can come to my own conclusions about what to do with it?
I'd strongly advise you to keep a few months worth of living expenses in an instant-access savings account. Having this kind of emergency fund can stop you from getting into debt unnecessarily if you lose your job or have a major expense appear out of the blue.
I'd also strongly advise you to avoid any investment you don't fully understand. Interest rates are miserably low at the moment, so it can be tempting to dabble in shares or some property-based investment scheme. There's always a tradeoff between risk and reward, so be extremely wary of anyone promising you high returns with low risk.
>>6858 Highlighting the one piece of advice there that is absolutely and unconditionally worth following:
>avoid any investment you don't fully understand.
Savings rates are at historic lows, and returns on equities aren't brilliant either. Even the historically boring but high-dividend stocks haven't been doing what they used to. For the last decade the environment has been particularly ripe for (to call a spade a spade) con artists to pitch promising schemes to people whose only sins are wanting a better return on their modest investments and not being financial experts.
Without wanting to sound like those con artists, there's one simple trick that works almost every time. When you see an opportunity, ask yourself who's promoting it and what's in it for them. If you can't work out the answers, consider the scheme not understood and walk away. Nobody ever went bust by missing out on a good investment they didn't understand.
Seems pretty fine to me. The FTSE and Dow Jones have recently hit record highs.
Besides, most investors make the mistake of putting their money in when the markets are high; if you think markets are low then that's the perfect time to invest.
