Simon Lambert

Beat inflation, you're not getting any richer, you're getting poorer.

Growing your wealth long term is by investing your money into the stock market, using the ability of companies to take money, put it to profitable use, and then reward those who invest in them, either with their share price going up or with dividends being paid out.

And over the very long term, the medium to long term even, if you do that,

you should see a better return on your money.

It's not to say that it won't go down sometimes, but overall, it should go up.

Well, you've got a point there, Georgie.

And actually, young people aren't the problem here.

Whilst they might be much maligned, Gen Z and the younger millennial cohort are actually much more switched on about their money and much more switched on about making the most of their money and investing than the older generation.

It's actually, I

that need to be reached here.

Because I know from my years at This Is Money, from speaking to people, from the emails we get from readers, from the polls that we've run, from the sheer level of concern during the financial crisis about which banks shared licenses so that people had their money protected, from how much interest there is amongst readers about how much of their savings is protected.

I know that there are lots of people out there

who have money in that kind of over 50s say maybe who have and they're also younger than that too who have a lot of money sitting in cash now you need money in cash you need a rainy day fund there's varying sort of

how much that should be ballpark figures.

Three months of essential spending is a common one, right?

Or three months of post-tax income.

But above that, you should be thinking about investing your money because otherwise it's not being put to the most productive use.

Now, there might be a reason not to do that.

It might be that you have the money because you need it in the short term.

You need it for, for example, house deposit or you've got something that you have to pay for.