While the following content is intended to be educational, it does contain promotional material for Kaldi.

There is a particular type of person who turns 27, reads one Reddit thread about compound interest and decides they have been personally robbed by every day they didn't have money in the stock market. They will tell you about this. They will tell you about it at a birthday dinner. They will tell you it at a wedding. They have a spreadsheet.

And then there is the other type of person, who hears the word "invest", and feels the same full-body dread you get when someone in a group chat says "so who's going to call the landlord". Not today. Not me. I'll just leave it in the current account, thanks. It's fine there. It's safe. It's got feelings.

Most of us live somewhere between these two people, vaguely aware that we should be Doing Something with our money but not quite sure whether the Something should involve a savings account, an ISA, a pension, a shoebox under the bed or just giving up entirely and buying a really good sandwich. 

So, should you save or invest first?

The boring answer is, it depends. The less boring answer is that it depends, but in a way that's quite easy to work out, if you stop panicking for five minutes.

The part where we talk about the boring one first

Saving is the sensible sibling. It does not go to parties, and it’s not dramatic. You put money into a savings account, and the bank gives you a bit of interest. Your money is there when you want it, whether it’s next week, next month or next year..

The thing savings accounts are brilliant at is being boring in a crisis. If your car packs in, or you lose your job, or your cat develops an expensive and slightly made-up-sounding illness, you do not want to be ringing up the stock market going "excuse me, could I get my £800 back please, only Mittens has contracted Feline Hyperthyroidism". You want it sitting in an account, behaving itself. Ready to go.

This is what people mean when they talk about an emergency fund. It's not a glamorous phrase. Nobody has ever pulled someone at a bar by whispering "I've got three months of outgoings in an easy-access account" into their ear. But it is the thing you should have before you do anything else with your money. Three to six months of your basic costs, tucked away somewhere you can get to it. Rent, bills, food, the absolute essentials. Not "three months of going to the pub four times a week" money. Real money.

And now the one that feels scarier but probably isn't

Investing is the sibling who went travelling and came back with opinions. Over the long term – and this matters, because the long term is where investing earns its keep – money in the stock market has historically grown more than money in a savings account. Sometimes a lot more. The catch, because there is always a catch, is that it also goes down sometimes, and occasionally it goes down in a way that makes the news and makes everyone panic.

The rule of thumb most people land on, after a lot of faffing, is this: if you won't need the money for at least five years, investing starts to make a lot more sense than letting it sit in a savings account losing value to inflation. If you’ll need it sooner than that, be it a wedding next summer, a house deposit in two years’ time, a baby that is, alarmingly, already on the way, then keep it in savings. The stock market does not care about your timeline. It will absolutely bottom out the week before you exchange on a flat.

So for most people, the honest order of operations goes something like this. First, have enough savings that a bad month doesn't become a bad year. Then, once that's sorted, you can start thinking about investing the money you don't need to touch for a while. Pension, ISA, whatever. Future You's problem, and also Future You's reward.

What nobody says out loud

The reason most people never get around to any of this isn't that they can't work out the maths. It's that whole thing, from opening accounts and choosing funds to remembering to move money around every month, sounds like homework. And nobody does homework voluntarily. You've never met anyone who came home from work, poured a glass of wine, and went "you know what I fancy? Some admin".

Which is where apps like Kaldi show their worth. Kaldi is built around the idea that you shouldn't have to think about any of this very hard. You shop with partner brands, the cashback lands in your Kaldi pot, round-ups from your everyday spending go in on top, and you can have it auto-invested into a fund, a Stocks & Shares ISA, if you want the tax wrapper, or a General Investment Account if you don't. You can also just keep it as savings and withdraw it whenever. There's no rule saying you have to pick a team.

The appeal, if you are the sort of person who finds "sitting down and organising your finances" roughly as appealing as "sitting down and organising your finances", is that it's all happening in the background while you get on with the weekly shop. Your money is being a bit more sensible than you are, which is, frankly, all any of us can ask of it.

So, should you save or invest first?

Save first. Enough to cover yourself if something goes sideways. Then invest, ideally in something boring and diversified, over a long enough time horizon that the ups and downs stop feeling personal.

And if the whole thing still feels like too much to think about, that's fine. Find a system that does most of the thinking for you. Your money doesn't need you to love it. It just needs you to not forget it exists so it has a chance to grow.

When you invest your capital is at risk. The value of your investments can go up or down, and you may get back less than you put in. Tax treatment depends on personal circumstances and is subject to change in the future. Kaldi provides tools and information to help you invest but does not offer personal financial advice. If you're unsure, consider speaking to a qualified financial adviser.