thanks again. now i need to sit down and read the stuff. inflation is slowly but surely eating away a bit of cash, so i need to put it away somewhere. on a side note, stock investing is new to me and has alwasy appeared tricky, so i usually put my stuff in mutual funds, not because i am risk averse, but because stock picking requires a great deal of tiem and effort both before pickign the stock and while monitoring its performance. i got around 10% last year on some vanguard funds. and i am still kicking myself for not investing in the energy fund cos i thought it was overpriced at the time.