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Investment for Youngster

Hi,

I'd be very grateful for some advice.

I'm 18, about to start Uni in October. One savings bond (I think- I'm not quite sure what they are/were) has just matured and one is about to, giving me a bit over £7000. On top of that, for the next 3 years, I'll be getting £3000 per (academic) year from the Student Loan Company (in installments).

I won't be needing this while I'm at University (Oct 2003 - Jun 2006). Beyond that, I'm not sure what my plans will be. I suppose I might continue to invest the money, or use it to buy a car/deposit etc.

I don't think I need to be conservative in my planning- I'm still 18, and if I lose out, so be it.

I've been reading up at fool.co.uk, and looked at a few websites and came up with this:

Open an ISA at comdirect (£25 a year), put in £7000 and get a selection of iShare ETFs (no fee to buy it within the ISA). Do the same when my loans come through (though not for this financial year).

I'd really appreciate it if some people could give me advice-

Is this plan a bad one? What should I be doing? Have I misunderstood how ISAs/ETFs work? Should I got to a different ISA manager? Should I get different products (instead of the iShare ETFs)? Are index trackers a bad idea right now? Is it idiotic to invest my money in equities (as opposed to some guaranteed interest thing) since I _might_ want to take the money out when I leave University in 3 years?

Also, if I do get some iShares, I was thinking of getting all the different types, perhaps with emphasis on the one tracking the FTSE

100, the S&P 500 and one of the European ones. Is it a bad idea to invest in trackers trackin foreign markets due to the currency exchange risk?

Anyway, thanks for reading this if you've got this far! I'd really appreciate some advice.

Cheers, Gordon

Reply to
Gordon
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Times have changed. I also suspect those kinds of rules were honoured more in the breach ... When I was a student the poorest students were those from reasonably well-off homes whose parents refused to pay the parental contribution. These days the poorest students come from the poorest backgrounds and tend to be most likely to drop out of University.

Very few Universities have sufficient parking for staff any more as the campus gets used up for new buildings (conference centres, sports facilities, science parks and the like). There are usually limited parking permits available for students with special circumstances.

Thom

Reply to
Thom Baguley

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