Your investment planning strategy should be tailored to fit your own unique circumstances and position. Only you know what your interests are, how much you know about investing generally, your risk comfort level and how much you have to invest.

Age is one of the main factors in working out an investment plan to suit you. Since all investment carries a certain degree of risk, the younger you are when you start investing, the better. If you are young enough to factor in at least 25 years of investing before you need to touch your money, you are at the prime position for investing. You have time to lose and recover investments when you are young. This doesn’t mean you should choose high-risk investments for all of your spare cash. A good portion of your investments should still be in areas that are safe, such as superannuation or other retirement accounts.

No one should venture into the stock market without a modicum of knowledge - that would be foolish. Instead, set yourself to learn a little bit at a time so you don’t feel overwhelmed and give up before you start. The less you know, the more your investing planning should rely on managed funds. There is a great deal to learn about investing and you won’t be able to learn it all in just twelve months. But once you start to learn, you may be comfortable keeping a percentage of your money out of managed funds and invest it using the knowledge you have gained.

Since personal investing takes time and effort, you need also to make sure you have the time to invest your money satisfactorily. Depending on your knowledge of stocks, you’ll need to commit at least five hours of your time per week to your investing. Of course this will depend on the ratio of individual stocks to managed funds that you have.

Investments need to be analysed to find out if they are a good risk. You can use expensive investment services or you can choose the free ones that are just as good. Many public websites have balance and cash flow statements, press releases and earnings reports. Choose a few reputable websites and stick to them, otherwise you’ll be inundated and confused with the amount of information you find.

Even when deciding on your own investment strategy, you can take advantage of a general market index. Keep a similar investment ratio across the sectors, otherwise you may find that you are dangerously over-allocated in one sector. Then if it begins to lose money, your diversification will not be wide enough to save you. Don’t let thoughts of losing money put you off investing though. It is by getting in and doing it that you learn best, and you stand to gain a great deal more by investing than by standing on the sidelines wondering if you should.