When it comes to investing money to set yourself up for retirement the first thing that people tend to think of is shares. Although this a great investment instrument, it is not the be all and end all of investing. Before making a decision on where you're going to investment your hard earned money make sure that you seek financial advice and that you choose something that is suited to your current and future financial and personal circumstances. In saying that, below are some
high yield investments that can give you similar or even higher returns than shares.
Foreign Exchange - If you currently invest in shares and have a good track record, it may be easy enough to take the principals you've learned trading the stock market and using them to trade forex successfully. The major differences between the 2 is the amount you can leverage. Unlike shares, you can leverage your forex accounts up 1000:1. This does carry more risk, but if you are conservative in your approach there is lots of money to be made in this market. The other difference is that there is no brokerage fees. Buying and selling shares can become very expensive as you have to pay a brokerage fee for each transaction. You will never have to worry with that when buying and selling forex.
Property - This type of investment, to some people, is a more conservative investment. There a lots of ways that you can invest in property to get higher returns. Some options that you would have is by flipping property. Trying to find a home that is slightly undervalued, renovate it and then put it back on the market in short period of time, trying to get a better price than what you paid. A more aggressive way to invest in property is by writing property options. This involves you entering into a contract to purchase a house of someone, instead of agreeing on a normal settlement period the purchaser tries to arrange a delayed settlement of around 12 months. Within that period you seek to get a DA Approval to build a set of units on the block. The purchaser (yourself) then lists that property for sale with a DA Approval with the intention to sell it to a builder at a much higher cost. This means you never have to go into ownership of the property, but you get to keep the difference between your purchase price and agreed sale price to the builder.
If you aren't too comfortable with investing in high risk/speculative investments you may want to consider investing in a
high yield money market fund. Your money will be looked after by fund manager and will agree to give you an estimated return on investment. This is generally higher than savings accounts, but no return can be guaranteed.
