Hi, could use some advice here. I have about half my savings (house deposit money) in a deposit account with the Bradford and Bingley earning the market rate, and the other half in a with profits fund with Standard Life.

I was missold this fund by an "independent" financial advisor in 2000 who told me that the fund was safe, ok for short term, and a better investment than property (sigh) and that smoothing prevents any losses. Just after that I went abroad travelling for 3 years. Obviously what he said was a load of baloney because it lost several grand and they imposed a whopping exit penalty while house prices were still rocketing, but now its back up to par and I just got a nice share wind fall from the privatisation and am wondering what to do next.

I had decided to just leave it there until my wife and I want to use it to buy somewhere but all the talk on this forum of crashes suddenly has made me scared that the fund will collapse again. Safety says I should take it out now then, but the thing is we dont really have enough money for a good deposit at todays prices and if its going to keep outperforming the market rate we desperately need any extra we can get from this investment.

To be honest I dont really understand how it works and Ive already been burned by a so called expert - can anyone tell me if these funds would automatically crash along with a uk housing crash or are they now better managed?