This is often the best savings strategy because your budget soon adjusts to the regular amount going out each month. What you need to do depends on several factors - how long you can tie your cash up for, for example, and your personal attitude to taking a risk. Remember that you can usually get better rates on postal accounts than in traditional, branch-based ones. Teaching your children the savings habit can be one of the best things you can do for them, so encourage them to check the rates available on special children's accounts. Longer term investing tends to mean share-based investments, which, over the medium term, have tended to do better than money left in the bank or building society.
Unit trusts have many different options, each with a different degree of risk.
Remember too that it usually costs nothing to take advice - an adviser gets commission from the company whose products he recommends, but you won't usually get a reduction if you go direct. Be sceptical of advice from salesman such as bank staff or insurance company representatives, they can only sell products from their own company, which may not be the best for you. Updated April 2000. Associated New Media Ltd. All rights reserved.