MT Focus - Getting started with investing

It's not all about returns

Feel free to file this one away for future reference.

The Bank of England’s base rate is at the all-time low of 0.1%.

It’s a great time to borrow, given debts won’t cost you as much in interest repayments. But if you’re a saver? Well, rates are meagre at most high street banks and they’re being continuously slashed. That’s perhaps why, for some, investing is suddenly looking quite appealing.

As every investment product will tell you, investing involves an element of risk - you may end up with less money than you put in. Plus, past performance is not an indicator of future returns. Essentially, you should only invest what you can afford to lose.

With that in mind, I asked Hannah Owen, a financial planner at Quilter, for some insights into getting into investing.

How can a complete novice get into investing?

According to Owen, the first step is choosing a “wrapper” (the type of product) to hold your investment in. There are lots of options for this but the two most obvious choices are stocks …