Home Home, Law & Money
If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options

Investing

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Hi :wave:

I'm more of a saver than a spender, and I have been thinking for a while about possibly investing some money into something. I'm quite interested in coins and have been looking at gold sovereigns and bullion, but i'm totally new to it all, so don't want to get something and regret it, but I know whatever I do would be a bit of a gamble. Does anybody else do something similar? If so, what kind of thing do you invest in and how's it going? Any advice would be good. thanks. :cool:

Comments

  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Talk to a financial advisor.
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Fiend_85 wrote: »
    Talk to a financial advisor.

    Yup.

    I'm pouring most of my spare cash into building my ISA. My friend who is super into investing always recommends Index Tracker Funds, which are lower returns than manual trading shares but are a bit less risky. Not risk free though.

    I think that before doing any actual investing it's better to save and make sure that a) You have several months worth, if not a year, of living costs saved up b) you are funding your retirement through a personal pension.
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    oh I was hoping to do something more along the lines of buying something and wait for the value on it to go up and then sell it. oh well
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    My grandad invests in gold, and stocks and shares. It's often all over the place, and making money back can be hard. I've seen him get very stressed! As others have said talk, speak to a financial adviser, but make sure you're prepared for the emotional turmoil of seeing your investments lower in value! :)
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    haha I don't need any more stress! I think i'll leave it for now, since I don't know what i'm doing! thanks!
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I was hoping to do something more along the lines of buying something and wait for the value on it to go up and then sell it.

    This is called speculating generally, it's not bad per se, its just far riskier. You are basically betting that the price of a security will go in a certain direction.

    Investing tends to be buying assets that have a good likelihood of appreciating and/or returning a dividend.

    Two examples:

    A speculator buys dollars because they think an upcoming US economic announcement is good, which will increase the price of dollars - afterwards they can sell.

    An investor buys shares in a group of companies in different industries that have a solid record of a 5% dividend and a 5% annual price growth.

    Speculating tends to be short term, investing tends to be long term / perpetual (many people will just lock away investments so they can draw them down in eventual retirement).

    As Infinite says a good way to get into investing is with indexes, which divide your investment equally across many companies (depends on the index as to the specifics) without you having to do the hard work.
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    that sounds so complex to me, :s but thanks for clarifying. Not sure I should get into something I know nothing about. I'm just in a position of not being able to work and probably won't be for quite a while so wanted to earn some extra dosh
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    A good way to turn some money into more money is trawling eBay and flipping items. It's not riskless though and generally you want to specialise on items you know something about.

    Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4 Beta
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    i do sell things on ebay quite often, but not sure what you mean by trawling and flipping?
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Nutter wrote: »
    i do sell things on ebay quite often, but not sure what you mean by trawling and flipping?

    By trawling I mean finding bad listings and buying them. By flipping, it means buy something that is either mispriced or has a really crap listing, give it a really nice listing and a good price, you make the difference.

    So for example one person I know buys collection only furniture with shit photos, bids £5 and wins, goes and collects it, polishes it and cleans it up, relists as a classified listing for say £100 including delivery and then just arranges delivery with a courier for not an obscene amount. But he likes furniture so its a bit of a hobby, which is why he knows which things are truly tat and which things you could sell for more.

    From your picture you like bikes? Maybe you could look into whats being bought and sold on ebay for motorbikes, and then simply buy stuff which is priced very low, make it look brand new, and re-sell it on at a higher price.
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    ah cool thanks for that shyboy. maybe my photography training will come in handy eh?
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    This also works if you buy things out of season and sell them in season. For example, a friend of mine buys up winter childrenswear in summer really cheap, and resells at a higher cost in winter when everyone's looking for it!
  • Options
    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    spanner wrote: »
    This also works if you buy things out of season and sell them in season. For example, a friend of mine buys up winter childrenswear in summer really cheap, and resells at a higher cost in winter when everyone's looking for it!

    Genius idea :)
Sign In or Register to comment.