Best option for long term investment

[StealthPolarBear]

Dh has been paying into a pension for a while but has been aware it's probably not as good as it could be. We'll soon be in a position to invest more money and have no idea what we should be looking at for long term investment. Pension? Property? A combination of the two? Gold bars? Oil paintings :o
We don't even know how we start to make this decisions, can anyone make any suggestions?

Bump

You won't know until afterwards what is/was the best investment so don't put all your eggs in one basket.
That's spectacularly unhelpful!

I'd say that property generally is a good investment but individual properties can be spectacularly bad investments. So either go for some generalised fund or be very careful about the individual property/ies you buy. Generalised funds are easier and cheaper to get into / out of; individual properties tie up a lot of money (see earlier comments about eggs and baskets) and have large transaction and holding costs.

Caveat: these are my ramblings, I am not qualified to give financial advice.

Thank you. I suppose, being a bit of a sheep, I'd like to know what people who do understand this stuff are investing in.
good point about eggs and baskets though. Either way he will up his pension contributions I think.

I think that a golden rule is: if you don't understand it then don't invest in it. I'm sure that some people are making a fortune on deep-discounted leveraged futures on the grey market. Or I might have just made that up. Don't be bamboozled.
If it was that easy then we would all be doing it.

Our current plan is to kill several birds with one stone. (1) property is a good investment (2) we want a 'pension' to live on (3) the next generation need help to buy.
We are going to be the Bank of Mum&Dad and give the DC a mortgage: we get an income at better than Building Society rates, they get a roof over their heads at lower then ditto. Everyone is happy. Although it goes against my eggs/baskets rule!

pensions get a lot of tax relief so make the most of it. If yours is overcharged/underperforming then change it to another one.

max out stocks and shares ISAs. Don't put more than 50k with each provider though.

investment = risk. Spread the risk.
savings = no risk BUT very hard to stay ahead of inflation. Thanks, Carney.

Market tracker, drip feed contributions rather than lump sum.

Switch to safer investments as you near retirement age.

Anything else will require a high degree of knowledge and regular monitoring. Even if someone can advise you well now, they won't be around in 5 years' time to tell you to get out.

Either that or pay someone to manage your investments, but to be honest they don't necessarily outperform the market, and if they do it's probably luck.

Thank you, that all makes a lot of sense. We would consider buying the dcs a house but we'll need to do something before then as they're just primary aged

Yep, agree with special subject

We've done well with some high risk investments but have limited that to only what we could afford to completely lose (less than 20%) of our "portfolio"

I hate savings as it's just loosing value but like most we have to keep some available although I do move it around a lot just to get some interest on it.

My most unusual investments are on my dining room wall.
I know exactly what they are worth
I enjoy looking at them in the mean time
and they will go up in value because each is unique and irreplaceable.