Amount to Invest: £40k
Country you live in: England
Income: Variable. Estimate £50k/year.
Risk Tolerance: Medium.
Timeframe for investment: 1-3Years
Debt: 0

I'm 24 and want to start putting my money away for saving, its been lying in my bank getting 2% interest for a while now and thats probably stupid. I want to save up to buy property, am flexible between 1-3 years.

Any advice?

stake me on merge and bovada and we'll take over the world on sunday

I have about 15k to invest..
Willing to leave it for a few years minimum
Have random stocks on td ameritrade now like goog aapl etc looking for more or etfs or something different
Risk: low-high doesn't matter

Recommendations? Any help is grateful.

Random thoughts.

VGK - Euro bet. Undervalued stocks, risking huge if Euro collapses and stuff.
VTI - US bet. Total market stock.
KBE - Bank stock etf. Lol. Roulette. Huge upside.

thanks, any opinions help, gives me more to research. I have these 2 etfs now FXH IYE.

Just a general noob question.

If I researched an etf or mutual fund, I find what I think is good (assuming I am not a total dumbass) do they usual perform well in the long run, lets say 5 years?

this thread has been kind of dead lately, so i'm going to take a crack at some replies. please note that I AM A HUGE NOOB WHO IS ENTIRELY SELF-TAUGHT AND PROBABLY KNOWS NOTHING.

i think being a us citizen entitles you to use discount brokers like vanguard and fidelity. this is apparently a huge deal -- folks from other countries generally have poorer options.

i would start by keeping 6-12 months living expenses in a high-interest savings account. shop around for a good interest rate from an internet bank, e.g. ally.

the next thing i'd do is figure out how to get that cash working towards my retirement. it's probably too late to get it into a 401k (or similar, if you have such a vehicle available). you can stick $5k/year into an individual Roth or Traditional IRA up until tax day. hence, you could put in $10k total between 2011 and 2012 any time after the start of next year. i would put the rest into a taxable account.

i'd use a Lazy Portfolio to allocate the money in the IRA and the brokerage accounts. something like your age as a percent in bonds, the rest split between total US stock market index and total international stock market index.

yes, i think having 80% of your money on a poker site is a big risk. did you learn nothing from black friday?

if i understand you right, you consider this money to be your poker bankroll, it's just that you don't want to keep all of it on a poker site? if so, how comfortable are you with taking risks with this money? "investing" it would mean there's a possibility you wouldn't get it back.

i'd look to traditional savings vehicles here. 2% interest is pretty good in this market, so maybe sticking it in your post office is the best thing. you could also look to internet savings accounts or certificates of deposit (CDs).

it's great that you're already thinking about retirement. your money has a long time to grow. using a Roth is great (assuming tax law doesn't change too much) since you're in a low tax bracket now.

do you have an emergency savings account? i would fund that as well as a retirement account.

anyway, given limited resources in the retirment account, i think this is a great suggestion:

quick, easy, cheap way to establish a well-diversified portfolio without paying a lot for it. actually this is a good answer for mktiouet too if he doesn't want to deal with setting up a whole portfolio.

do you have any student loan debt? i would probably just keep it in savings given that your life situation doesn't sound very stable.

you could also consider getting started with an IRA (that's individual retirement account, btw; you mention you're english so i suppose i should clarify that i'm not talking about car bombs and catholicism ).

yes, that is an aggressive asset allocation. you don't give your age but if your investment timeline could be as short as 5 years, this is probably too aggressive. (i.e. how would you feel if this investment lost 50% of its value when you went to spend it in 5 years?)

yes, diversification is a key element of investing. there's more to it than just geography, but most advice is to split approximately 50/50 between US and international. my reading suggests that international bonds don't really add much to a portfolio which already contains US bonds and treasury vehicles, but i'm an american and ymmv.

read a lot! i like the motley fool for getting started and then the bogleheads wiki once you're familiar with a few terms.

no one can predict the future and it depends a lot on your time frame. long term, those expectations seem reasonable, even a little modest, for a diversified portfolio.

1-3 years is not a long investment timeline. 2% is not so bad in this market, but you could look into CDs if such a thing exists in england. you could also investigate short-term bonds, though i guess there is some uncertainty in the bond market these days related to inflation.

i'd make sure to have an emergency fund and my retirement accounts squared away before proceeding further.

with 15k i'd probably just use a targeted retirement account (even if you don't plan to retire, you can use these with an eye toward having money at a specific time in the future).

it depends on a lot of things. no one can predict the future.

5 years is closer to the short run than the long run in investment terms.

the fact that something is a mutual fund (or an etf) says nothing about what it's trying to do. there are bond mutual funds which are looking for low-risk ROI, and there are emerging market and micro-cap mutual funds which are willing to accept high risk in hopes of big rewards. if these latter funds lose 25% of their value over the next 5 years but then increase in value 300% in the 5 years after that, did it "usually perform well"?

as i understand it, the safest way to have your portfolio perform well is to diversify, to use low-cost passive investments like index funds, and to stick with it for the long haul.

hth!

nofknway et al,

i found a thread with some advice about investing for a poker player in the uk. might be relevant to some of your interests. is the OP over there a poster here?

http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/view...hp?f=1&t=87605

(the awesomeness of the bogleheads forum really cannot be overstated. it's probably the single most important thing i learned from this thread.)

FWIW, if you are a US citizen but you do not maintain permanent residence in the US, you cannot invest with Vanguard.

have you done more research further on this? is this limited to australians only?

So my girlfriend has about $5K that, IMO, she needs to put in a place that earns more than nothing a year (i.e. a savings account, where her money currently is). She's saving to buy a car after she graduates from college (this May), once she has a reliable source of income so she can make insurance payments.

Location: Virginia, USA
Income: None now, likely won't be much once she gets out.
Risk Tolerance: She has very low risk tolerance. She's one of those people who wouldn't be able to sleep at night if she lost money, so she needs something SAFE. I'm sure I can convince her to loosen up a bit though.
Timeframe for investment: Likely <1 year. A liquid investment is important.
Debt: None (parents paid for school).

Should I just pick and choose stuff from Vanguard funds?

vanguard funds are way too risky for your gf in such a short timeframe. i would look at a high-yield savings account or maybe some CDs.

If she needs the money in less than a year and is uncertain about future income, then the obvious answer is to leave it in cash. Look at Ally or ING or something for best interest rate, but you're still looking at less than one percent.

Besides potentially too-high volatility, what's the disadvantage(s) in, for example, the Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund. In particular with regard to the time frame?

Well, you only gain one percent yield at best in all likelihood, but you have a much higher chance of losing money if rates tick up at all. You're talking about an upside of about 50 bucks but much greater downside. For someone who is very risk adverse and wants to use this money in less than a year it just doesn't make sense to me. A short term bond fund would make more sense but then you're looking at the same yield as an online savings account.

It sounds like you're tempted to play around with this money, but it just doesn't make sense for such a short time horizon. Don't get too clever, imo.

i agree with dalerob.

+1 not the most exciting thing to do for her but it is the best

+1