While many people have made a fortune out of property in the UK over the past few years, some have lost a packet – even as prices continued to rise. These are the so-called ‘Sell-to-Rent’ brigade, who attempt to time the peaks and troughs of the house price cycle by selling their home at the top and then buying after the presumed house price crash.

With prices finally wobbling and the credit crunch making terrible headlines every day, now looks a great time to sell-to-rent. Flog your home for £350,000 and you might be able to buy it back in five years for £250,000!

Happy times? Perhaps, but remember:

• 2005 looked a good time, too (prices dipped slightly when interest rates began to rise)
• 2003 also looked a promising time to sell (the onset of the second Gulf War led to a plunging stock market and global gloom)
• 2001 saw the earliest sell-to-renters make themselves known (this was around the time that London property first passed through its long-term price-to-earnings average, which has historically been a good barometer as to the future direction of house prices. It’s proven very unreliable in this era of low interest rates)

Now London property blog The Rat and Mouse notes that the sell-to-renters are back, going on to warn that:

Few financial decisions are as risky, or real-world calculations as tricky… taking in the cost of storage, rents (which can go up and down), the costs of selling and buying, the value of time, inconvenience and risk, all multiplied by however long it might take for prices to start to drop and then assuming it’s possible to buy in just before everybody else does. The chances of getting all this right are low.

Too right. I’ve not sold-to-rent, but I hold my hands up as a would-be first-time buyer who has sat out the property market for several years now, most recently believing that property prices are unjustifiable if you compare mortgage costs with rent.

It’s been a costly error. You gamble with the Great British love of property at your peril.

Catching up with some of my favourite financial blogs (no, Monevator.com is not an island!), I’ve noticed a sour note on those that follow the net worth of the author (e.g. My 1st Million at 33 and Accumulating Money).

I admire these writers for putting their cojones on the line so publicly. My thoughts certainly shouldn’t be construed as a criticism of their efforts.

However, there’s a reason why I don’t track my personal net worth on Monevator.com, and it’s being demonstrated by the depressed tone that many personal finance blogs as the market falls.

The trouble with tracking your net worth

When things are going well, as they did for several years up until the end of the 2007, blogs tracking personal net worth seem heroic. Booming stock markets and rising property prices see an ambitious target drawing nearer month by month. £500,000 no longer seems a distant dream, and £1million looks feasible.

However when markets or property prices fall, progress towards your goal is cut short. And there’s a particular problem when your goal is a net worth figure:

• You cannot control the price the market puts on your stocks or your home

If you’re a financial blogger tracking your net worth, you may be doing just what you did last month or last year – saving hard, earning well, and giving us a ringside seat – but suddenly the results don’t look so good. This can be dispiriting, and I’d be concerned it could turn me off investing altogether.

My approach: focus on goals and targets I can control

Goals are crucial, but they have to be attainable for you to keep working towards them. Attainable means controllable. Have a target of a million in the back of your mind if you want (I do occasionally add up the value of all my investments), but in the meantime focus on stuff that you can achieve.

Controllable goals include:

• Saving 15% of your salary
• Reducing your monthly shopping bill by 20%
• Doubling your income over the next five years

These are all financial goals you have some ability to move towards achieving – it’s up to you to save more, find cheaper groceries, or boost your career. The price of groceries may rise or fall, or you may find it hard to get a raise, but that’s nothing compared to being at the mercy of uncontrollable fluctuations in stock markets.

With stocks and shares, we hope our investments will go up over time, but in the short-term they can plunge, as this bear market has repeatedly proved. It’s out of our control.

Good longer-term targets might be:

• A monthly income target from your investments. (I recently wrote how replacing your salary with investment income could be a good long-term goal). Income from a basket of dividend paying blue chip shares and bonds is much steadier than the same portfolio’s capital value
• Maxing out your tax-saving investment plans each year. (For instance, I think in the UK anyone with sufficient earnings should try to use their annual £7,000 ISA allowance.)

Create your own targets that suit your situation, but I’d suggest concentrating on things you can do, like saving more, not things that will be done to you, like the particular return from the markets in any year. Like this you focus on what’s achievable by you now, not on how generous the stock market may be feeling.

Ironically, it’s a better time to buy shares for income than a year ago. You can get 10%-25% more dividend income from a basket of leading shares than at the peak of summer 2007. In the long-term, markets (shares and property) will bounce back, and this bear market will likely be seen as a great buying opportunity rather than a time for apocalyptic hand-ringing.

Thanks to the recent stock market volatility, investors are increasingly turning to gold, which is traditionally a safe haven in troubled times. This article introduces Bullion Vault, a company that enables you to buy and securely store small amounts of the highest-grade gold, which the company claims offers unique advantages for small investors buying gold.

Why are investors buying gold?

Sales of gold via exchange traded instruments have soared recently, with funds that invest in gold mining shares such as Merrill Lynch’s Gold and General Investment Trust have produced returns of around 500% over the past five years.

In 1999 gold was trading at around $275 per ounce, which was when Gordon Brown, the UK’s then Chancellor of the Exchequer, decided to sell half the nation’s store, further depressing the price. Gold has since rallied very strongly. Having broken through the $900 per ounce mark in the past few months, it’s threatening to sail through $1,000 an ounce in 2008. (Thanks a bunch, Gordon!)

Fans of gold (so-called ‘gold bugs’) make the following case for investing in the yellow metal:

• As a real asset, gold is a hedge against inflation.
• Demand for physical gold is increasing, with new money from India and China said to be particularly keen on gold. (Indian farmers traditionally buy gold jewelry as a store of value.)
• Production difficulties are constraining supply. Power supply problems in South Africa are the current bugbear, but exhausted mines, political instability and environmental concerns perennially hamper production.
• Most gold in the world has probably already been mined.
• Even though gold has increased nearly four-fold in dollar terms since its lows in 1999, the previous high reached in 1980 would be around $2,000 today, adjusting for inflation.
• China and certain other central banks are now increasing their gold reserves.
• In a world of ‘paper’ or ‘fiat’ currencies, gold is the ultimate wealth preservation tool. The US can print all the paper money it wants, but it can’t conjure up gold.

There are also convincing arguments against gold

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