I provide direct access to investment solutions from the St. James’s Wealth Management Place Group. With a distinctive approach to investment St. James's Place offer what I believe is a superior investment process likely to maximise your ability to achieve a better return over the medium to long-term.

5 key rules to where you should invest your money and when:

1. Invest for the long term – you should always plan your investments for the longer term because the shorter term is so unpredictable. No-one really knows what is going to happen to shares over the next 12 months. All I can say, with a pretty high degree of confidence, is that if you hold onto those shares for the next 10, 15, or 20 years, you are likely to be much better off than you are today.

2. Emergency funds – make sure you always have sufficient money on deposit to meet your shorter term ‘emergency’ needs and this should be kept in a bank or building society deposit. How much should you keep on deposit? It depends on each person’s individual circumstances and very much on attitudes to risk.

3. Risk – you should never ignore that, sometime in your life it is likely that you are going to have to live through a period of significant inflation. The effects of inflation can be just as severe a risk as a sharp fall in markets. In fact, the effect of inflation is in many ways more severe than the effect of a market fall because market falls are almost always followed by recoveries, whereas when inflation sharply reduces the value of your savings, the reduction in value is permanent.

4. Diversification – the answer to risk is to diversify your investments as widely as you can and this is covered by types of investment. Shares and property are two asset types that provide potential for inflation protecting growth. It is better to invest in funds which spread your money widely and ensure the funds you invest in represent a diversification between different sectors and add in an element of international investment. Don’t forget to diversify by investment manager.

5. Find the very best managers you can with differing strategies to each of those classes of investment. There are some much better at fund management than others, but even more important some of them are much worse.