The focus of this column so far has been on the basics of getting spending under control, reducing debt, instituting a savings programme and generally getting your head fixed on right.

We have much to do in that area as 2006 unfolds, but this part of the of year is the wrong time to be addressing all that. So this week, instead, we'll fast forward for a look into your financial future.

We'll pre-suppose that you've got your debt and spending under control, are earning as much as you can, given the realities, and have saved some dough.

Dough is the perfect metaphor in this case. Have you ever baked a cake? If you have, you'll know that the most important element in baking is the mix of ingredients.

You want the best cake possible. Too much salt, say, and the outcome will be spoiled. The mix is the message, where cakes are concerned. So it is with investment portfolios.

Once you've gotten a little stash of cash together, you have to make the first in what will amount to a lifetime series of decisions about the mix of investments that will achieve your goals.

You won't just make decisions to buy or sell. In fact, those are often the easiest part of having money. Every hour of every day that you don't buy or sell, knowingly or not, you will make the decision to hold.

Even leaving all your money in the bank, or under the mattress, is a decision, usually a bad one in both cases.

The getting of money, you see, is a piece of cake, compared to the keeping of money. As tough as it is to accumulate a million dollars, it is much, much easier to make a million dollars than it is to keep a million dollars.

The biggest factor stopping you from being a millionaire is you; any number of factors kicks into play to separate you from your money once you have some. Inflation, family, bad luck, bad management, and bad decisions are just a few of them. Depressing, ain't it?

To take the cake metaphor a little further, you only need a few ingredients to make a cake. The actual number of ingredients is limited.

It's the ones you choose that make the cake what it becomes. Similarly, with an investment portfolio, the number of ingredients is limited.

Cash, cash for emergencies, time deposits, bonds, stocks, mutual funds, hedge funds, currencies. That's about it, and then some, in terms of realistic investment choices for those with a little bit of money.

The way in which you mix these investments in your portfolio will go a long way towards determining how well you do. The possible outcome, by the way, against which your performance will be measured, goes from "pretty damn good" to bankrupt.

Investments won't make you a zillionaire overnight, but they can make you poor. Get the mix wrong and you'll join a long parade of losers.

If you think having no money is tough, try having some, that you're saving for your old age, and that you must manage sensibly and well.

It's hard work: and that's the road we're trying to get onto, and will be driving down if you keep reading and use your noggin.

Going broke need not be your only outcome. Anyone who has savings of almost any kind needs a financial adviser. It might be your Dad ? mine was ? or it might be a professional, such as my friend Martha Myron.

Advisers, unless you pick the worst possible one, protect you from the worst and, with luck, steer you towards a better day.

Because the mix is so basic, some ideas have almost calcified into rules. Here are a few. The total risk you assume should make you comfortable, because you need to be able to sleep at night.

The risk should be commensurate with your age. In your 20s, you have time and compound interest on your side, and will have the chance to erase any bad decisions as time goes by.

In your 70s, you have a pension, if you're lucky, and must live with the results of how well you survived those risks.

Your portfolio should have a greater spread of investments as it grows. If you've got $10,000, a bank deposit may be your best bet.

Buying three shares, half a bond and an eighth of an ounce of gold would cost more than it earns, and your money would never grow.

If you've got $1,000,000, a little bit of everything is doable and sensible.

That list of financial ingredients above, the one that started "cash, cash for emergencies" is listed in ascending order of risk. Cash is the least risky investment, in the sense that it's in your hand.

But even cash carries its own risks. If you're holding cash, and the stock market booms, you don't share in that boom.

If you're holding cash and inflation spikes, your cash loses buying power. Cash can be stolen, burned or dropped. Cash, in many ways, is the worst possible investment of the lot.

Luckily, if you manage to accumulate some cash, the choices for investing it are relatively simple and most of the sensible ones are relatively safe.

It's only as you get richer that it gets harder. This may, therefore, be the only time in your life that you are asked to spare a thought for the rich, who, in some respects, have it worse than you do.