Your attitude to risk should be considered when determining if you are best suited to growth or defensive investments.

Growth investments: Property and shares are usually classified as ”growth”. Whilst the returns can be expected to fluctuate in the short term, they have potential to produce higher returns in the longer term. Risk is higher but with risk comes potentially higher returns.

Defensive investments: If you are after regular income at relatively low risk, defensive investments such as cash and fixed interest generally offer small fluctuations in returns over the short term. Compared with growth investments, the risk is lower but you can expect lower returns in the medium to long term.