How to make money with minimum effort

When it comes to our investments, most of us are pretty apathetic. With that in mind, Merryn Somerset Webb picks her top long-term, low-risk shares.

FIGURES out last week claimed that 1.8m British adults never review their financial situation. That isn't true, of course. The real number is much higher, but people just find it embarrassing to admit it to strangers. Another 8m adults review their finances once a year. That's not true either. If it were, would so many of us be so deeply in hock to banks and credit-card companies and would home possessions be rising so fast? I doubt it.

Perhaps people define the word review differently, but the truth is that most of us are apathetic. We may concentrate quite hard when we take out our mortgage, but we rarely think about it again. Same with credit cards, loans and even investments.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.