This web site is for anyone who needs to increase their income, or to generate funds to ensure that their pensions can adequately cover their needs in future years.
My approach is this.
Even if currently you are feeling wealthy, we all face an uncertain future. Pension funds can fail or be eroded, or can simply vanish. And the old policy of ‘buy and hold’ with shares has been ‘downgraded’ ie it simply is not (and never was) a reliable policy. In short, if you have cash, you need to make it work for you. If you don’t have cash, you need to generate it. You cannot rely on your employer or the government to do it for you.
I will cover a number of possibilities. You can jump to whichever page grabs your interest or use the chart alongside relating to how much cash is suggested as a minimum for each option.
Caution
Bear in mind there is no such thing as a ‘safe’ investment with a guaranteed high rate of return. Guarantees can be like the guarantee that every retailer of electrical goods pushes at you – a fine source of income for the provider of the guarantee, but a disproportionately high expense for the purchaser.
When it comes to guarantees of financial products, the longevity of the guarantor comes into question – not every failed guarantor like AIG will get bailed out by the taxpayer. Nor will the UK government necessarily pay out on what appears to be a guarantee. So a guarantee can actually prove to be worthless as well as expensive.
A possible conclusion is that in the interests of safety, you need to live a little more dangerously. Take calculated risks, rather than unthinkingly buying the appearance of safety. Look on every investment as being as safe as houses ie, not safe atall! Maybe 70% risk, maybe .01% risk, but don’t fool yourself that it is no risk. Government debt zero risk? Really? Which government?
The extraordinary world we live in dictates (at least in some ‘highly developed’ nations) that a man must have a certificate to produce and serve a sandwich, but he can run an economy with no education in economics (or banking,, business, insurance, risk analysis or anything else). We have no option but to put up with whatever mess our politicians steer us into, but we are responsible to ourselves for mitigating the effects of their incompetence and self serving short term policies (or lack of them).
A quote from a famous philosopher, Bertrand Russell. “Man is not born stupid, he is born ignorant. It is education that makes him stupid”. Many of us have been processed by the same education system. But we are not all obliged to behave like stupid sheep. Good fortune with finding your own independent way.
|
Strategy |
Minimum Capital |
Preferred minimum capital |
|
High Yield Investment @ |
£3,000 |
|
|
Laying Odds |
£295 |
£1,195 |
|
Trading Markets |
£500 |
£5,000 |
|
£5,000 |
£10,000 | |
|
Property Investment |
£35,000 |
£100,000 |
|
Long Term Hedge Fund |
$1,000,000 |
£15,000,000 |
|
Giving it away |
£1 |
£30,000,000 |
The suggestions on capital required are all pretty debatable. You may find a suggestion
on the relevant page as to why I have come up with the above figures, but they are
only a starting point -
Disclaimer
You may have come here looking for specific investment advice. Sorry, for that you are required to seek out advice from an ‘Independent Financial Adviser’. This site can only provide you with suggestions for discussion with your IFA. For general advice on IFAs you can visit thisismoney.co.uk
A particular IFA you may like to consider using is here.
Find out now where you can earn 3%-
Other good sources of information
Web Sites
TradeTheMarkets.com (US market)
ETF-
BusinessOpportunityReview.co.uk
Journals
Articles
Can you double your money in a year?
The top lead for the majority of readers is probably this one
to create additional income or increase your wealth
Suggestions to discuss with your IFA
Skipton Building Society has raised its ‘guaranteed’ rate on mortgages by 1.5%. Why ? Because market conditions have changed. Probably the sort of thing that their customers thought it would be handy to have cover against!
The FSA has fined Standard Li(f)e £2,450,000 for misleading 98,000 customers about the risk of investing in its Pension Sterling Fund. There’s two elements to that . Firstly, they were not being honest., and not just in a small scale localised kind of way. Secondly, you can be sure that they were not overstating the risk!
The financial services sector is highly professional at giving the impression that it controls or manages risk for you. The biggest risk is that you will believe them.
“Cautious Managed Funds” that cautiously lose 30% along with the stock market?
Northern Rock is only one recent example of a continuous and continuing line of large institutions with the appearance of solidity that have run and will run into the rocks.
Risk and safety are not always what they seem
