Top Tips

• Investment time scale - only invest if you are willing to tie up your money for the long-term so that you can ride out any short term stock market volatility
• Investment objective - determine whether you would prefer income or capital growth when investing and choose the type of investment accordingly
• Work out what you can afford to invest and decide whether you would prefer to be a lump sum or regular savings investor
  
  Regular saving means that you don’t have to time the market and you can benefit from pound cost averaging, so that you buy more shares when the price is low and fewer when the price is high
• Determine your attitude to risk - decide the level of risk you are prepared to accept in order to obtain the desired return