It’s the unthinkable prospect that has shaken the Disunited Kingdom to its foundations. No, not Brexit (everyone’s bored of that), but rather the fall of London property prices, the continued rise of which was previously considered to be as safe as, well, houses. Real estate agent Savills predicts that London property – particularly the so-called “prime” type hitherto beloved of overseas investors – will lose money over the next five years.

Blame Brexit uncertainty, but more so the gap between wages and prices in the capital, making mortgages hard to come by and any increase in interest rates crippling. Then there’s the extra three per cent stamp duty on second homes and imminent hike in tax for landlords. The “apocalyptic” 35 per cent drop in prices heralded by some headlines is “highly unlikely”, says Savills, which forecasts that they should go up by a national average of 15 per cent over the next five years. But London property looks less and less like a sound investment.

Then again, houses have never been quite as safe as Brits, almost uniquely obsessed with home ownership, tend to think. For a start, property is usually “leveraged”, which is to say that you put in your money, but also the bank’s, and a lot of it. You shouldn’t need Ms Lisa Conway-Hughes, author of forthcoming book Money Lessons and an independent financial advisor at Westminster Wealth Management, to tell you that this is risky: “Because if it goes down in value, you could end up owing the bank money that you don’t have if you decide to sell.”

Especially in turbulent times like these, bricks and mortar feel reassuringly, misleadingly solid. And you probably know family and friends who’ve done all right for themselves out of it. “Property’s something you can easily talk about at the dinner table,” says Ms Conway-Hughes. “Whereas if you started talking about your investment portfolio, I don’t know if you’d get a second invite.” Property is also easy to understand compared to investing, which seems complicated and risky: “But it’s neither of those things – if you do it properly.”

So where should you put your money, if not property? In three pots. That doesn’t mean investing in ceramics, nor secreting bundles of banknotes under your succulents. But your first pot – really, an easy-access account with a decent rate of interest – should be filled with cash. “It buys you time to wait if markets fall, so you’re not having to take money out when you’re at a loss,” says Ms Conway-Hughes, who suggests the Marcus account by Goldman Sachs. This contingency should cover your living costs – accommodation, food, new clothes, etc – for three to six months: “Once you’ve built that up, you can start to think about the medium- and long-term.”

Depending on how much you have to invest, your second pot should be a stocks and shares Individual Savings Account (ISA), which the government caps at £20,000. “Any gains you make are tax-free,” says Ms Conway-Hughes, who suggests looking for one with a wide range of investments, like these online options.

You then need to decide what investments to buy within your ISA. If you’d rather not pick stocks and shares yourself (not advisable), consider investing in funds. Passive funds that track the market without human intervention tend to be cheaper and may still deliver good returns over the medium to long term: for example, a “balanced” investor would have enjoyed a 30 per cent gain over the past three years, versus 40 per cent on the FTSE 100, with much less risk than the latter. With an active fund, you pay for and gamble on its manager’s expertise in the hope that they outperform the market. For investing anything up to £100,000, the above online options, which offer off-the-shelf investment portfolios, too, are “probably best”, says Ms Conway-Hughes; beyond that, you might be better off speaking to a financial advisor.

Either way, your portfolio ought to suit your attitude to risk – volatile stocks should return more long-term, but you have to brave the rollercoaster all the way to the end – and be widely “diversified” geographically and across sectors, in order to spread your eggs across multiple baskets. (High street options tend to be quite restricted.)

Pensions might be deeply unsexy, even scary. But not only do you get free money from your employer if you have a workplace pension, and from the government via tax relief, you have time to ride out the highs and lows and come out farther on top. In fact, ostensibly boring, prudent pensions are precisely where you can more afford to speculate. “The longer the time horizon, the more you should consider taking risk – within your comfort zone,” says Ms Conway Hughes.

Depending on the quality of your workplace pension, you can pump more money into that or start a personal one, searching as you would for an ISA. (You can have as many as you like.) What you definitely shouldn’t do is try and be too clever, or panic and pull out when the market crashes and apocalyptic headlines abound: “You’d never sell a property when prices are falling, but somehow people don’t apply that logic to an investment portfolio.”