What is a very safe investment?

Answer 1

No investments are safe over the short term. CD's and savings accounts are not investments.

There are some things that minimize risk:

1. A long time horizon. The longer you have to leave your money in the market, the better.

2. Low costs. Consider this chart:
http://www.retireearlyhomepage.com/advise.html

Many people are paying 2, 3, 4% or more annually in costs and they think they are paying nothing. There are many hidden costs in investing.

3. Staying the course - not chasing past returns or market timing, but setting up a good portfolio and leaving it alone except to rebalance or adjust for risk tolerance.

4. Diversification. Having an asset allocation that is based on your ability and need to take risk:
http://www.pfadvice.com/2006/12/06/investment-risk-tolerance-whats-yours/

5. Avoid financial advisors
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/BoomerBucks/20061206_investment_advice_a1.asp

6. Use index funds. Over time, they beat the pants off of 80% of managed funds.

Answer 2

The safest are treasury bonds (some bonds are often referred to junk bonds) and bank deposits. Go for whatever pays most interest.

In the long term, index funds tracking the US stock market are also safe and with a little luck should prove more profitable, though not necessarily so. Property is also a very safe investment, but needs a lot of capital and looking after tenants.

Answer 3

There aren't any safe investments. You can store money in things like treasury bonds or bank CDs but the return won't be much better than inflation and after tax may not be that.
Investing is taking risk.

Answer 4

This may not be the best answer to your question but I think that depending on what you buy, stocks and mutual funds are a rather safe investment. I know that sounds like ludacris, especially in spite of the Dow Jones Industrial Average's recent volatile slump, but...there are stocks like MHY and DHY that are not only cheap and not volatile, but they issue dividends. And just in case you aren't familiar, dividends are assets that companies return to shareholders.

Answer 5

The safest investment is a money market fund, but it pays the lowest rates. No risk, no gain.

Answer 6

shoe box
savings account
savings bonds
Cd's
bonds (gov't backed)
money market
bonds corp
mutual funds
stock
penny stocks

least risk to most risk -- i did not include land and since god is not making any more it is always a good investment if you have the necessary knowledge

Answer 7

This seems to be a real popular question these days. I wonder why? The answer is that t-bills are the safest. 3 month t-bills are marginally safer than 6 mo t-bills.

Answer 8

Municiple bonds are good tax free deals too, but there is some risk, but not much. HSBC online savings accounts are great too (hsbc.com) and they pay 5%!

Answer 9

if you live in the usa tax free bonds. I have been dedicated for 7 years and successful. yield is good. no loss like stocks.

Answer 10

you can find a cd with 4,5%-5.05%/year no minimum balance and is like a cheking account you can deposit money when you want and whithroll when you want
it,s easy open a account and make direct deposit to this account for free from your primary account
chek www.ingdirect.com and www.etrade.com