If you and your partner are thinking about investing money, make sure you don’t opt out of the decision as you may have different priorities and attitudes to risk.

How you invest your money is a personal decision. You might be the type of person who loses sleep every time the FTSE index falls – even if you don’t have any money tied up in the stock market. Or you could be as cool as a cucumber in the face of financial meltdown. Psychologists and financial advisers say that women sometimes opt out of long-term investment decisions if they’re in a relationship - leaving it to the man in their life. But if you have very different ideas about risk, it could be a big mistake.

Your financial goals
Before you can think about how you will invest your money, you need to work out your financial goals.

Questions to discuss may include:

1. What do you want to be able to do in 5, 10 or 15 years (buy a bigger house, support your children through university)? How different are your ideas to those of your partner?

SAVVY TIP: There are lots of calculators available online that will show you how much you might have if you saved a certain amount. Although investment returns aren't guaranteed, you could work out how much your investments might generate by picking different rates of return (for example, 3%, 5% etc). Websites to try include the Converter Site.

2. When would you like to retire? Does that coincide with your partner’s plans?

SAVVY TIP: There’s a retirement calculator on SavvyWoman which will give you an idea of how much you might retire on.

3. How much do you already have? and how do you want to use it?

SAVVY TIP: Don’t be tempted to opt out of any discussions about long term investments. Unless you keep your finances totally separate, it’s important that both of you are involved in the decision.

Issues to consider
If you’ve talked through and worked out some financial goals you can agree on, the next stage is to start planning how you invest your money.

• If you both feel comfortable making decisions about long term investments on your own (i.e. without any financial advice) lots of information available online. Some of it is independent and useful, some not so independent and some of it may be out of date and unreliable.

SAVVY TIP: Some people think that paying for independent financial advice is a waste of money. Unless you’re an expert, that’s rarely the case. There’s information about Using a financial adviser in the section entitled 'Growing your money'.

• A good place to start is the independent Moneymadeclear website. It has a section on savings and investments with an article called new to investments that's definitely worth reading.

• How much risk are you comfortable taking with your money? Do you have similar ideas about what is risky and what isn’t?

SAVVY TIP: Women tend to be more risk aware than men – many financial advisers I’ve spoken to say that women often want to know how much they could lose if the stock market falls.

• How would each of you feel if your investments lost money? (When working out how much risk you’re prepared to take, think about how you’d feel if you lost 10%, 20% or 30% of the money you invested).

SAVVY TIP: If you’re using an independent financial adviser, make sure you’re each encouraged to talk about how you feel about risk.

• If you could start over again, would you make the same decisions or do things differently?

SAVVY TIP: Cashing in investments you already have may not be the right approach as you may have to pay penalties or may get back less than you paid in. But it’s important to talk about how you feel about decisions you’ve already made.

SAVVY HELP: Karen Ritchie, an independent financial adviser with F-P-W, is one of SavvyWoman’s panel of experts. Why not ask Karen a question about investing by clicking here?