Oh and one more thing MrG, to answer you:
I will say simply this: Never put your money where your mouth (and mind and heart) isn't.This can range from advise on savings accounts/fixed savings etc all the way to when/where and how to begin investing in property or chucking money at a certain life policy or share on the stock exchange.
OR
Never invest in something you know nothing about or have little real interests in simply because "everyone else is doing it".
Stock markets are a very good example of a VERY complex entity that have their own specialised knowledge set and require real-world trading experience before you can even comprehend what's going on. Never mind actually making money.
Life Policies like retirement annuities are all much the same. Made of some funny optimistic maths that insurance companies only use to calculate their projections and not your level of risk and resultant premiums.
Which is what a Retirement Annuity is: A kind of long-running insurance policy really that pays your back a portion of the premiums you put in and takes about half of that in "Fees".
Property also makes for very expensive mistakes. The practical guide to property is: Only buy it for using it or when a someone else wants to use it. So if you're ever considering buying a piece of land as "an investment" (err more closer to a speculative put), if you have no real use planned for it, then you'd better make damn sure that there's someone else who wants that land more than you do and is willing or will buy it from you.
(which is a micro-example of the Stock market)
