G'Day,Depends on the amount of return and volatility you are...

G'Day,
Depends on the amount of return and volatility you are comfortable with.5 years is good if your going to leave it there but you don't want to be sitting on a loss after 5 years after management fee's and any other commision's, and it could happen if we have a volatile market or the market doesn,t perform too well over the next 5 years.For less fee's/commisions probably shares are the way to go, but then again you could pick the wrong stock and you could lose the lot or some of initial outlay in a bad market.My advice is do some research and look for a stock that is making money and has an established product/ business model that will give you a steady growth upwards.Preferably a stock that gives a good dividend such as Telstra which probably has the best divvie yield for the initial outlay cost, and TLS won't go bust.You will have to do a lot of looking around for something that will give an annual rate of return at a certain percent each year and you could google rule of 72 to calculate how long or how much you could get back on a given set amount of time/years.It's pretty easy it type define rule of 72 at google and it will tell you how to work it out.Also check some sites like Morningstar/ASX for some help if looking for a product from a bank/corporation.Look for a dividend that's fully franked at 100% so you won't have to worry about tax as the company will pay the tax on the money before it comes to you and you can claim the franking credit's from the ATO.A planner will mainly try to sell you the product's that he is instructed to advise on from the bank they work for and they will charge fee's/commisions or a percent of the returns.Your first visit to them is usually free but after that they could charge $500 just to give you one of their products and set you up with them.ATM with tls 12k spent at $4.38 will give you 2739 shares x this by .28c and it gives you $767 dividend per year fully franked.Thats good but remember the divvie is supposed to drop this year i think according to the company but if they have a good profit it may get increased so you can just keep an eye on it through the paper.
good luck