get a shares and investments portfolio

Was one of the Dummies series of books, Investments for Dummies, I picked it deliberately because of this goal.

It will be a start since I still dont really have much of an idea, it is a perilous topic to try and research online as there is as much bogus and phony information as there is useful or valid information.

Its just one of a dozen or more things I wish had been different about my school life, perhaps I’d not have wanted to hear it, perhaps my youthful lefty nonsense would have gotten in the way but the fundamental workings of what to do with money should you ever have any or how to make it in the first place would have been real good.

It was very interesting, they have a cautious, balanced and adventurous (got to love those labels when it comes to a description of risk/gambling on returns) profile/fund which you can invest in with mixes of shares and bonds, bonds are the safer, lower return options (governments and corporations) while shares are the risker options.

These are portfolios managed by traders for the bank and the balanced options involve a balance via switching money between bonds and shares depending upon the dividends/returns. Shares can result in big returns but they can as easily result in big losses. The profile they were trying to pitch was a balanced or cautious investor one because they said that if you wanted to invest in riskier options you needed to have the nerve and knowledge of business cycles to expect things to plunge and pick up throughout the duration of the investment.

Its all interesting and I’m going to do some reading, its not the exact same as owning a personally tailored portfolio but its maybe as close as I can get right now.

To be honest the UK economy doesnt look like it is going to pick up and make shares and investments a good idea or high returning idea. I sort of think they were suggesting that investing in property, even to rent, or as a home for myself would be preferable to shares or bonds.

So I’m thinking this all over now. Reading to do too. I dont think I’d easily get spooked by business cycles, I would consider however much I was investing as “already gone” and wouldnt be checking on performance until it pays out or experiencing buyers regret.

In the UK the property market is just going nuts, if you dont buy now it seems like you could be spending double or trible in as little as a years time, so people have been telling me that I should invest in a house to live in or rent out rather than anything else.

I might well do this but this is still a goal for me, I’ve been thinking more recently about how I want to build a portfolio, its a minefield, I’d like to support medical research but not paracorps or animal testing, I want to invest in research and business practices that could max out food production or develop new sustainable fuels but I dont want to support monsanto or terminator genes in crops (it was in The Omen for Christ Sake). And that’s all aside from the whole issue of needing a return on my money.

It’s given me a clue as to where to begin, I’m going to clear my debts and then perhaps open an account that I get a switch card so I can spend money online without accruing debt on my credit card, that way I can more easily ring fence some of my earnings for savings.

I’ve decided there’s no point making any investments until I have more of a lump sum.

Is still probably the best thing to plough hard earned money into but property and land prices are getting to the point of being seriously prohibitive.

In theory there will eventually be a market correction, who knows when that will be but until I’m going to consider putting my money into some sort of other investment or savings account.

To that end I’m going to speak to a financial adviser in the next couple of weeks hopefully and come to some kind of arrangement.

I also like the idea of getting stocks or shares in some company I like, maybe even framing a share certificate, just for fun, something like a choclate or confectionary company :D