Investing is one of the wisest financial decisions you can make with your money. Investing leads to a financially secure future for you and your family, and it’s a great way to ensure that you’ll live a nice life.

For many people though, investing is simply not an option. When it comes to investing opportunities like real estate, it’s simply too expensive to invest.

Thankfully, there are plenty of different investment opportunities that only require a portion of what some of the larger opportunities require. If you want to invest some money, but don’t have enough for some of the traditional larger investments, check out these investment opportunities that won’t break the bank.

Binary Options
Binary options are a relatively new form of trading and investment, but they are becoming increasingly popular for a number of reasons. One of the reasons their popularity is increasing is because typically you can invest with as little as $100. Since so many brokers will match your initial deposit, the more you initially invest the more free money you’ll get.

Binary options are called such because there are typically two outcomes to any trade. In essence, binary options work that you “bet” on the performance of certain markets. If the market reached the level that you “bet” on in a certain period of time, you get the payout. There are many different types of binary options trades, all of which have different sorts of payouts. If you’re interested in learning more about binary options check out BinaryOptions.net for comprehensive resources on learning about binary options.

Savings Bonds
Another popular and inexpensive investment opportunity is to purchase savings bonds. Savings bonds are very simple to understand, as they are just debt securities that the U.S. Department of the Treasury issues in order to help pay back money that the government has borrowed. Savings bonds are typically considered to be one of the safest forms of investments since they are backed by the government.

Savings bonds are long term investments, and the longer you hold onto them the more money they will be worth since the government will be paying more interest. Bonds can be purchased in sums of $50, $75, $100, $200, $500 $1000 $10,000. They are a popular investment to buy in the name of a newborn, as they will only grow in value as time goes on.

Stocks
Yes, if you want to invest in stocks like Apple or Google you will need a lot of money. But there are lots of stocks that you can invest in for dollars, even pennies! Inexpensive stocks are very common, and they can result in big time payoffs due to the cheap price.

Investing in cheap stocks requires a lot of work, because you’ll have to analyze whether or not the stock has any potential to perform. Even after doing so, there’s still a chance that you’ll lose money if the stock fails.

Be sure to do your research if you’re interested in investing in inexpensive stocks.

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Trading on the LSE’s electronic platform was shut down this morning on one of its busiest days of the year.

The timing of the shutdown is unfortunate for the LSE, which is facing increased competition from rival trading platforms such as Turquoise, a Europe-wide platform set up by a number of the world’s biggest investment banks.

Another rival, Chi-X, claims to have taken over 15 percent of trading in FTSE 100 stocks recently.

To counteract the challenge, the LSE slashed trading fees at the start of this month in response to a partial launch of Turquoise, which is not due to start trading proper until October.

Today’s debacle was thought by the BBC’s Business Editor Robert Peston, to have serious consequences for the exchange. A great deal of money was tied up in the system, money that could not be used in a rapidly rising market.

The British housing market could take 20 years to recover says one of the City of London’s leading investment banks.

In a note to clients, Mark Hake, an analyst at Merrill Lynch said ” … it looks significantly worse [than the 1990 downturn], with house prices falling faster and further and very little recovery in real terms expected over 20 years. … House prices are expected to be below their August 2007 peak in a further 10 years’ time.”

The investment bank forecasts house prices to fall 17 per cent this year, while inflation is set to continue its upward march in coming months as the economy absorbs the effects of higher oil and food prices.

If that were not bad enough, David Kern, economic advisor to the British Chambers of Commerce, thinks unemployment will rise to nearly two million by the end of 2009. He commented, “The results of this survey signal a menacing deterioration in UK prospects We are now facing serious risks of recession. London appears pretty weak and it’s across the board. Businesses are in a lose-lose situation. Falling demand and the squeeze on consumer disposable incomes will limit how far prices can be increased.”

With Nicola Horlick warning us off shares for three years, there aren’t many places left to put our funds.

As RBS’s credit analyst said last week, cash is the only safe haven now.

After finally ridding the British economy of its endemic postwar inflation, the current UK government seems to be slipping back into its old ways.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) recently said, “Pay awards in both the public and private sectors have got to be consistent with our inflation target of two per cent.” His reasoning is that if pay rises were higher, prices would go up and consume the value of higher pay.

A former Conservative Health Minister, who knew a thing or two about economics had this to say on the same subject, “Of course when there is inflation, prices rise, including wages, which are the price of labour. That is what inflation means; the statement is a mere definition. But it is as absurd to say that inflation occurs because prices rise as to say that it rains because the ground gets wet. You cannot have rainfall without the ground becoming wet; the one is inseparable from the other; but we do not mistake the result for the cause.”

His alternative to Labour’s prices and incomes policy approach would be to take money out of circulation by the government spending less or the Bank raising interest rates, or a combination of both.

In Britain, growth is at present around 2pc, and is likely to fall to about 1.3pc in the coming year. Inflation, according to government approved figures is about 3.5 per cent. That gives a total of 4.8pc.

Compare that to a rise in money supply (M4) of 12pc and the cat is out of the bag.

Inflation is caused by having too much money chasing too few goods. And it’s the government that injects that money into circulation, partly by excessive borrowing.

Plus ca change …