Is an Income Mutual Fund a good alternative to a savings account?
"The value will certainly fluctuate up and down (but on average gain more than a savings account), but so long as you have enough liquid assets for emergencies, then yes, it's a perfectly good alternative to savings accounts. how risky, in general, are Index Income Funds. How are you defining ""risk""? If you mean ""probability that I'll lose it all"" then it's virtually zero.  If you mean ""how much the value can fluctuate"" then it's certainly not risk-free, but it has less volatility that individual stocks.  If you take the S&P 500 as a proxy, you might expect the change in value over any given year to fluctuate between -30% (like 2008) and +40%, with an average change of around 8%. There will be funds that have less volatility, but produce less return, and funds that have more volatility but higher average returns." Risk. Volatility. Liquidity. Etc.  All exist on a spectrum, these are all comparative measures.  To the general question, is a mutual fund a good alternative to a savings account? No, but that doesn't mean it is a bad idea for your to allocate some of your assets in to one right now. Mutual funds, even low volatility stock/bond blended mutual funds with low fees still experience some volatility which is infinitely more volatility than a savings account.  The point of a savings account is knowing for certain that your money will be there.  Certainty lets you plan. Very simplistically, you want to set yourself up with a checking account, a savings account, then investments.  This is really about near term planning.  You need to buy lunch today, you need to pay your electricity bill today etc, that's checking account activity.  You want to sock away money for a vacation, you have an unexpected car repair, these are savings account activities.  This is your foundation.  How much of a foundation you need will scale with your income and spending.   Beyond your basic financial foundation you invest.  What you invest in will depend on your willingness to pay attention and learn, and your general risk tolerance. Sure, in this day and age, it is easy to get money back out of an investment account, but you don't want to get in the habit of taping investments for every little thing. Checking: No volatility, completely liquid, no risk Savings: No volatility, very liquid, no principal risk  Investments: (Pick your poison) The point is you carefully arrange your near term foundation so you can push up the risk and volatility in your investment endeavors.  Your savings account might be spread between a vanilla savings account and some CDs or a money market fund, but never stock (including ETF/Mutual Funds and blended Stock/Bond funds). Should you move your savings account to this mutual fund, no.  Should you maybe look at your finances and allocate some of your assets to this mutual fund, sure.  Just look at where you stand once a year and adjust your checking and savings to your existing spending.  Savings accounts aren't sexy and the yields are awful at the moment but that doesn't mean you go chasing yield.  The idea is you want to insulate your investing from your day to day life so you can make unemotional deliberate investment decisions.
Unfortunately, in this market environment your goal is not very realistic. At the moment real interest rates are negative (and have been for some time).  This means if you invest in something that will pay out for sure, you can expect to earn less than you lose through inflation.  In other words, if you save your $50K, when you withdraw it in a few years you will be able to buy less with it then than you can now. You can invest in risky securities like stocks or mutual funds.  These assets can easily generate 10% per year, but they can (and do) also generate negative returns.  This means you can and likely will lose money after investing in them.  There's an even better chance that you will make money, but that varies year by year.  If you invest in something that expects to make 10% per year (meaning it makes that much on average), it will be extremely risky and many years it will lose money, perhaps a lot of it.  That's the way risk is.  Are you comfortable taking on large amounts of risk (good chances of losing a lot of your money)? You could make some kind of real investment.  $50K is a little small to buy real estate, but you may be able to find something like real estate that can generate income, especially if you use it as a down payment to borrow from the bank.  There is risk in being a landlord as well, of course, and a lot of work.  But real investments like that are a reasonable alternative to financial markets for some people. Another possibility is to just keep it in your bank account or something else with no risk and take $5000 out per year.  It will only last you 10 years that way, but if you are not too young, that will be a significant portion of your life.  If you are young, you can work and add to it. Unfortunately, financial markets don't magically make people rich.  If you make a lot of money in the market, it's because you took a risk and got lucky.  If you make a comfortable amount with no risk, it means you invested in a market environment very different from what we see today. --------- EDIT ------------ To get an idea of what risk free investments (after inflation) earn per year at various horizons see this table at the treasury.  At the time of this writing you would have to invest in a security with maturity almost 10 years in order to break even with inflation.  Beating it by 10% or even 3% per year with minimal risk is a pipe dream. "There are several reasons. One, mutual funds provide instant diversification.  To build a diverse portfolio ""manually"" (by buying individual shares) requires a lot of time and effort.  If your portfolio is not diverse, then it is wrong to say ""buying shares gives higher return""; in many cases diversification will increase your returns. Two, mutual funds reduce transactions costs.  If you buy individual shares, you pay transactions costs every time you buy or sell.  If you buy and sell the shares of many companies, you must perform many transactions and thus incur heavy fees.  With mutual funds, a single transaction gets you access to many companies.  In addition, it is often possible to buy mutual funds without paying transactions costs at all (although you will still pay fund expenses). Three (sort of a combination of the previous two) it is just easier.  Many people can easily buy mutual funds with no cost and little effort through their bank.  It is also simple to set up auto-investment plans so that you automatically save money over time.  All of these things are much more complicated if you try to buy many individual shares. Four, if you buy the right kinds of funds (low-cost index funds), it is probably more lucrative than buying individual shares.  The odds that, through carefully selected stock-buying, you will earn more than the market average are small.  Even professional stock-pickers consistently underperform broad market indexes. In short, it is not true that ""buying shares gives higher return"", and even if it were, the convenience and diversification of mutual funds would still be good reasons to use them." "So you are off to a really good start.  Congratulations on being debt free and having a nice income. Being an IT contractor can be financially rewarding, but also have some risks to it much like investing.  With your disposable income I would not shy away from investing in further training through sites like PluralSite or CodeSchool to improve weak skills.  They are not terribly expensive for a person in your situation.  If you were loaded down with debt and payments, the story would be different. Having an emergency fund will help you be a good IT contractor as it adds stability to your life.  I would keep  £10K or so in a boring savings account.  Think of it not as an investment, but as insurance against life's woes.  Having such a fund allows you to go after a high paying job you might fail at, or invest with impunity.   I would encourage you to take an intermediary step:  Moving out on your own.  I would encourage renting before buying even if it is just a room in someone else's home.  I would try to be out of the house in less than 3 months.  Being on your own helps you mature in ways that can only be accomplished by being on your own.  It will also reduce the culture shock of buying your own home or entering into an adult relationship. I would put a minimum of £300/month in growth stock mutual funds.  Keeping this around 15% of your income is a good metric.  If available you may want to put this in tax favored retirement accounts.  (Sorry but I am woefully ignorant of UK retirement savings).  This becomes your retire at 60 fund.  (Starting now, you can retire well before 68.)  For now stick to an index fund, and once it gets to 25K, you may want to look to diversify. For the rest of your disposable income I'd invest in something safe and secure.  The amount of your disposable income will change, presumably, as you will have additional expenses for rent and food.  This will become your buy a house fund.  This is something that should be safe and secure.  Something like a bond fund, money market, dividend producing stocks, or preferred stocks.   I am currently doing something like this and have 50% in a savings account, 25% in a ""Blue chip index fund"", and 25% in a preferred stock fund.  This way you have some decent stability of principle while also having some ability to grow.   Once you have that built up to about 12K and you feel comfortable you can start shopping for a house.  You may want to be at the high end of your area, so you should try and save at least 10%; or, you may want to be really weird and save the whole thing and buy your house for cash.  If you are still single you may want to rent a room or two so your home can generate income.   Here in the US there can be other ways to generate income from your property.  One example is a home that has a separate area (and room) to park a boat.  A boat owner will pay some decent money to have a place to park their boat and there is very little impact to the owner.  Be creative and perhaps find a way where a potential property could also produce income. Good luck, check back in with progress and further questions! Edit:  After some reading, ISA seem like a really good deal." The S&P 500 is a stock market index, which is a list of 500 stocks from the largest companies in America. You could open a brokerage account with a broker and buy shares in each of these companies, but the easiest, least expensive way to invest in all these stocks is to invest in an S&P 500 index mutual fund. Inside an index mutual fund, your money will be pooled together with everyone else in the fund to purchase all the stocks in the index.  These types of funds are very low expense compared to managed mutual funds.  Most mutual fund companies have an S&P 500 index fund; two examples are Vanguard and Fidelity.  The minimum investment in most of these mutual funds is low enough that you will be able to open an account with your $4000. Something you need to keep in mind, however: investing in any stock mutual fund is not non-risk.  It's not even low-risk, really.  It is very possible to lose money by investing in the stock market.  An S&P 500 index fund is diversified in the sense that you have money in lots of different stocks, but it is also not diversified, in a sense, because it is all in large cap American stocks.  Before investing in the stock market, you should have a goal for the money you are investing.  If you are investing for something several years away, an index fund can be a good place to invest, but if you will need this money within the next few years, the stock market might be too risky for you. "I am in a different situation, because I earn more than I spend, but I have found that I need to make the money inaccessible if I want to really avoid spending it.  I used to just throw my paychecks into a high-yield savings account, but eventually the balance was large enough that a ""large purchase"" didn't seem like ""that much"" (because I would have had so much left in the account after the purchase).  It was way too easy for me to spend way too much. Now, I invest my savings automatically.  The obvious benefit is my money has a much higher growth rate than a simple savings account (especially with fed interest rates so low).  I invest most of my savings in 401(k)/IRA retirement accounts, where there are severe penalties for withdrawing prior to retirement age.  Then, I invest a significant portion to a regular brokerage account, where the money is invested in stock and bond funds.  This money is accessible within a few days of whenever I need it.  The remainder of my savings goes into a savings account as cash I can get to at any time.  All 3 accounts grow with every paycheck (market fluctuations aside).   This 3-tiered system helps me to categorize my savings as ""Never, ever touch"" (retirement accounts), ""Touch, only if I can wait 3 days and am willing to pay taxes"" (brokerage account), or ""touch whenever you need it, with no penalties"" (Savings account).  If my savings account grows too much, I'll move money from there to the brokerage account (where it has more growth potential).  The longer my money is invested in the brokerage accounts, the less taxes I'll need to pay when I sell/withdraw the funds, so that's even more incentive for me to keep those funds where they are. I have credit cards, so in my opinion, having to wait 3 days for funds from my investment account to become accessible is considered ""accessible in an emergency,"" because my credit cards can be used to cover a large purchase for 3 days, and as long as I pay it off within the grace period, there's no interest charged. tl;dr investing is probably the smartest way to both grow your money and prevent the urge to spend it right away.  My advice is to start with a 401(k) or IRA as soon as you can, since the younger you are, the more time until retirement that your money has to compound.  Investing $100 more a month can mean hundreds of thousands of additional dollars in your account when you're ready to retire." "The number one difference is that bank savings accounts, or money market accounts (MMAs allow limited checking--six non-ATM withdrawals per month, max, else possible fees) have FDIC insurance up to $250,000.  However don't put that much in--allow some room for interest, so you never go over the $250,000.  Money Market Mutual Funds do not enjoy FDIC insurance.  There may be some SPIC insurance--generally against brokerage failure though, but its coverage is questionable--search out those details, and if they apply to anything besides actual cash held at the brokerage.  If the money market mutual fund is strictly invested in US Treasury securities (like T-Bills, or other short-term US Treasury instruments), it enjoys the full faith and credit of the US government, FWIW--but many MMMFs invest in corporate instruments.  If the fund has any pricing issues, there might be a delay in getting paid off.  (Extremely unlikely.)      Number two, and more importantly, bank savings accounts (or MMAs) pay way more!  You can get a bit over 1% APY now--many paying 0.90% APY, or higher.  No money market mutual funds are close to that, generally yielding a small fraction of that, almost zero for US Treasury MMM funds.  Sure 1.05% ain't too exciting, but you may as well get the most you can if holding ""cash,"" and fully insured to boot." When you are saving for money you need in 5 years or less the only real option is a savings account. I know the return is nothing at this point, but if you cannot take the risk of losing all of your money that's the only thing I would recommend.  Now you could try a good growth stock mutual fund if, when you look up in 2 - 3 years and you have lost money you wait it out until it grows enough to get what you lost back then buy your house. I would not do the second option because I wouldn't want to be stuck renting while waiting for the account to recover, and actually thinking about it that way you have more risk. 3 years from now if you have lost money and don't yet have enough saved you will have to continue paying rent, and no mutual fund will out preform that. "Yep, most 401k options suck. You'll have access to a couple dozen funds that have been blessed by the organization that manages your account. I recently rolled my 401k over into a self-directed IRA at Fidelity, and I have access to the entire mutual fund market, and can trade stocks/bonds if I wish.  As for a practical solution for your situation: the options you've given us are worryingly vague -- hopefully you're able to do research on what positions these funds hold and make your own determination. Quick overview: Energy / Utilities: Doing good right now because they are low-risk, generally high dividends. These will underperform in the short-term as the market recovers. Health Care: riskier, and many firms are facing a sizable patent cliff. I am avoiding this sector. Emerging Markets: I'm also avoiding this due to the volatility and accounting issues, but it's up to you. Most large US companies have ""emerging markets"" exposure, so not necessary for to invest in a dedicated fund in my unprofessional opinion. Bonds: Avoid. Bonds are at their highest levels in decades. Short-term they might be ok; but medium-term, the only place to go is down. All of this depends on your age, and your own particular investment objectives. Don't listen to me or anyone else without doing your own research."