If going down the shares route as opposed to property - picking a spread of strong performing unit trusts is the best bet for me, maybe 5/10k in each, that's what I'd do, one from each of UK, USA, Europe, Japan and a lesser amount in emerging eg China/India. Research it well (fund supermarket sites have the past performance data on all of the unit trusts) and - Quids - I think this beats just doing a FTSE tracker as 1) you get a decent fund manager choosing your stocks and 2) you get a global spread of risk/upside. Quite low charges on most unit trusts and no acquisition cost through a fund supermarket.