Quote Originally Posted by Andre View Post
The more % you get the more risk there is of some tycoon spending it all for you declaring bankruptcy and you left with ziltch. goverment backed things are the way. Some bank shares maybe. Gold is stable. look for the guarentees you get; the less of them, gets more % but you can lose the lot.

You cant really lose investing in your own piece of land like where you can see a city growing and heading out towards it.

So long as you can afford the repayments and so long as you dont sell if the land price drops for a while, you will be doing great in long run.

Out here we have a goverment backed first home owners scheme where they put in alot of cash towards it for you, It was like over 15 grand for free, now I think its even more,they did this to stimulate the econemy and get new building underway again. Australia is just a giant work site really,lots of growth still.

If you play the markets ,know about the product and company you are buying into study up and think it out in real terms, if you dont and you trust others with your hard earned cash think of it like you are puting it on a horse that is going on a three year race.
I wouldn't mind owning some property but I wouldn't want any here because it is all high rise apartments and they typically get redeveloped every twenty years or so. They are very poorly built. It's not a sound investment at all. You own a space in the sky and eventually the government will offer you meagre compensation to get out and if you dig your heels in will then get the mafia to turf you out. The property market is grossly inflated here as well with property prices being way above what they are actually worth. They all look like the housing projects from poor areas of the US. I don't know what the attraction is, but that's what they are all into out here. Instead we pay a large deposit and live rent free for the year, and at the end of the year you get back your deposit. A lot of people do that these days. It does make sense financially, but is quite different from anything I ever had in the UK.

Savings accounts are all well and good but with inflation running rampant here at well over 10% my return of 4% isn't even keeping up with the costs of living. Need to do better somehow. Stocks and funds look interesting, but like you say it can all be a bit of a russian roulette. Quite scary, and I don't want to be one of them that jumps out of the window after taking a heavy blow.

I would quite like to own property in the UK, but seeing as I'm seldom there it would be really difficult to manage things. We do own some land in the Korean countryside as a result of my father in laws untimely death, but unfortunately it's value is very low and shows no sign of rising. Nobody lives in the countryside these days and nobody wants to buy land there. I wouldn't mind keeping it and building a house there one day so I can retire and grow potatoes.