The minimum period to consider investment for is five years, 10+ is much better. Ideally you want to drip feed money in so you are more insulated from and can even make the most of dips (pound cost averaging) and then NOT look at it (assuming you use an index tracker). Best of all get real advice

A good financial advisor is like a good accountant, they earn you much more than what they charge (and free advice off people on the socials is worth what you pay for it)

since I have a mail from my IFA to hand, here's the last 3.5 years in a FTSE tracker (pink) versus the funds my IFA manages for me (red): cumulative performance is 28-29% for both over 3 years, 21-22% over 3.5 years and 51% for the FTSE tracker over 5 years (managed fund hasn't run that long

but if you look over different periods, you see the impact of a market slump; over 3 months it's 7.7/10.9%, over 6 months it's only 0.67/6.94% - v poor return from the FTSE and you can see the advantage of a managed fund.

on the chart you can see a number of times when the returns are negative - but they recover and over the long term returns remain high

the discrete performance - how it does within a single year rather than since the beginning of the investment - is smaller numbers: 4.7/8.4% in the first year, 13/12% 2nd year, 8.9/5.9% 3rd year, -2%, 20% -11% years 4, 5,6

that doesn't mean the investment is down overall - just that it went up, up, up, down, up, down (this is a great article on why you want to know that as well as the cumulative performance - consistently good versus occasionally brilliant)

investing *is* gambling; you're betting that the stocks will go up more than the interest you could get from a bank which pays you out of what it makes by lending money/investing itself* but at a rate matching what a central bank says is fair given the economy.

over long periods, for sound investments, that's usually right; it can also mean that at a point when you need money, it might NOT be true but it you can wait it will probably be true again (massive handwave about the complexities of markets, bonds and gilts vs stocks and funds here)

pension funds make more conservative investments: that doesn't always pay off. the 6 month cumulative return of 6.94% from a FTSE tracker would be just 3.34% from a Scottish Widows pension fund over those same 6 months; 29% vs 25% over 3 years, 51%/39% over 5 and the 21% over 3.5 years just 14.32%

My first financial advisor started cracking a joke after the 2008 crash; remember, the value of shares can fall as well as plummet!

But again, getting a financial advisor (or an accountant) feels like it something *other people* do.

It feels like something that costs money, and we're only having this discussion because we don't have enough in the first place

financial advisors don't (usually) charge you money up front; they make a small ongoing charge (maybe 1.75% compared to the 0.9% a pension fund charges or the 0.4% a stocks and shares ISA charges, so they all cream a little off). that reduces your return slightly rather than you handing over cash

but then you also have to find a reputable financial advisor. And not feel ridiculous going to them.

they're regulated and fairly well regulated; if you don't know someone who already uses one they'd recommend, in the UK you can go to Unbiased and get a list of local financial advisors and get a free session with them to get a feel for whether you feel comfortable with them as well as what they do

if you don't know enough about investing to feel comfortable having that conversation, you can start at the FCA site to get the basics. is the feeling ridiculous thing imposter syndrome? because *everyone* deserves to get professional advice to make more of their pennies, not just the rich!

changing that view would be the best way of making investment more accessible to people; it should be right up there with starting a pension (I have an accountant because I have a company, most people won't need that as much)

The thing is: in the long run, cash is actually the worst investment possible. You don't have the yo-yo thing but you also (a) barely follow inflation (b) every ~100 years a country just fucks its currency up and if you're holding cash you're left with nothing. Long term, stocks are...safest.

It usually depends on your timeline for using the money invested: "not going to touch it for five years or more" is reasonable for a stocks & shares isa but usual advice is to keep 6 months costs in cash before you think about that.