I've had a question in from Carl, he's got two kids, aged three and five, he's got money in the

bank and he's wondering if he can put it to better use.

Welcome to another five minute Friday here on Meaningful Money. money. people give them money, grandparents, and it's our job as parents to look after that money

as best we can for the kids.

So like many of us, Carl has opened a bank account for his kids

and he's wondering if that's the best thing he can do for them.

So let's answer that.

Stick five minutes on the clock down here and let's crack up.

First thing to say with investing is that time scale is always important.

Risk is a key factor as well and risk and the amount of risk

you should and are prepared to take with your money is a function of time scale.

Generally speaking the longer you have to invest for the more risk you can

afford to take. Why is that? Well it's a matter of time scales and the windows that

you're looking at investments over.

See, if you leave the money in the bank, it's 100% safe.

If you invest it in the stock market, different kinds of investments like that,

then there is risk involved.

So you might look at the performance of a stock market over a fairly narrow

window here and you can see that well actually that's pretty wobbly line and if it happens in that

very short time window that the market has gone down significantly, you might think,

I don't want to take that amount of risk with my money. But if you extend the time scale,

what you very often find is that that downturn in the middle is just a blip along

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