Don’t waste money on shares, buy memories

I have always thought that shares are a total nonsense. How can people allow others to play with their hard-earned savings — let them charge ridiculous fees for advice or trading, lose almost total control and slice off endless bits. There is no creative process involved. It is all gambling. You can’t put them on the wall, drink them, eat them, drive them. Honestly, they are a waste of good paper.

Obviously, in the beginning, shares are a pretty useful thing. Mr Marks needed Mr Spencer to put in some money, take shares, otherwise they might never have made it to the high street and the nation would be knickerless. But all the people and institutions now wailing and gnashing about the global markets did nothing creative, began nothing, made nothing, just played with money — or other people’s money.

Over my long-legged life, I have held shares. Did I not put £3,000 into the Groucho Club [in Soho, central London] when it was opened in 1985 by some of my friends? When it was bought years later, I got £30,000 for my shares.

One day in 2001, I walked into the HSBC in Cockermouth, Cumbria, and bought shares worth £10,000 in the bank itself and also BP, Safeway and the brewer Scottish & Newcastle. I reckoned people would always need money, petrol, food and drink. The date was September 11, 2001; next day, the world’s stock markets collapsed. I sold my stock 10 years later and made a modest profit. Since then, nada. I’m done with shares — for ever.

Imagine looking at them all the time, worrying about the ups and downs. All the paperwork, keeping account of every piddling dividend for tax reasons. What a faff.

So, what do I do with all the spare money I have acquired? Under the sofa? Good guess. Down the back of the sofa? Not looked recently, but there must be loads. In no particular order, here goes.

Property

In my lifetime, there is no doubt that property has been the best bet. Over the years I have had several country cottages, a flat in Brighton, and another in Portugal, each sold at a goodly profit. Now we have two — our London house and one in Lakeland.

The rise in London values is, of course, obscene, so let’s not go there again, but Lakeland has not done badly either. I paid £92,000 for the house in 1987 and guess it is worth about £500,000 today. But the thing about houses is living in them, looking at them, loving them. You have control, and can sell when it suits. Some chancer on the Beijing stock exchange is not going to make it valueless overnight.

National Savings Certificates

I bought the index-linked and fixed-rate savings certificates — for me and my wife, not that she knows or cares — till the government stopped selling them in 2011.The rates on offer were modest compared with the shares 13-year-old experts were tipping on the financial pages. But the income is tax-free, there is no need to look at their performance, and you can just forget about them. I have never cashed them in because you can reinvest old certificates when they mature.

Peps, Isas, Tessas and Premium Bonds

Yes, got a lot of those — very boring, but tax-free, no paperwork, no tax returns needed. With Isas, I always choose the fixed-rate cash variety.

Building societies

I hold fixed-rate bonds, with a term as long as possible (normally, five years). I don’t have as many as I did, though. Once they mature, I put the money into other things. The rates are rubbish and paying tax on the returns is a drag.

Collections

This is where I put any spare money — all personal indulgence, whims and assorted madnesses. I have about 20 collections. A lot of the contents are pretty worthless, and will be sent straight to the skip by my wife when I snuff it. I call them my treasures, as I do treasure them.

Some I also call research material, even though I don’t always know I am going to use the objects in books when I buy them.

I have five letters written by Beatrix Potter, which were handy when I did a book about her [Beatrix Potter’s Lakeland] in the Nineties. I bought the letters for £50 about 30 years ago. They are signed B Heelis, which was her married name, but two are addressed from Hill Top [her home before her marriage, now owned by the National Trust and open to the public]. They must be worth a few thousand now.

I have original Beatles material, picked up for little or nothing 50 years ago. Also, a good collection of letters written by the famed fell-walker Alfred Wainwright. Bought for pleasure, not investment.

I did go potty at one time on my football collection, buying 19th-century books at Sotheby’s. Several cost me £500 each. I’ll be lucky to get back half that.

I don’t know anything about painting, but I know what I like. I bought a Vanessa Bell for £3,000, the most I have paid for anything in my collections. It shows Charleston, the famous house of the Bloomsbury group [near Lewes, East Sussex], not that I had heard of it at the time. Just looked nice. I have a Beryl Cook, bought for £200 when I interviewed her for The Sunday Times Magazine, back in 1975.

I also have an LS Lowry drawing, bought for sentimental reasons, as I had moved from the north to London. I paid £180 at an auction in 1980. It’s just a simple drawing, the sort a child could draw, as many of my friends have told me since.

All my collections have been hanging on the wall for decades, bothering nobody, but giving me pleasure every time I pass.

If you are lucky enough to have gathered spare money while trundling through life, what you want it to do is stay quiet, safely in a corner, not needing any attention, not causing worries. Not like shares, eh? Oh well, you have to laugh . . .

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Do you like to put your money into shares — or do you avoid the stock market altogether? Email: money@sundaytimes.co.uk