I'm well aware that there are several other forums for this, but as the HN community is filled with experts on venture capital and other forms of investment it seemed like an untapped resource to crowdsource your collective knowledge on the subject.

I'm a 20 year old who works full time and has been looking in to investing a small amount of money monthly to give me some financial stability in the future. Rather than go for a pension, I want to manage it myself over time and move the money around to wherever I will get the best deal, but as this is my first time I could use some advice:

I am looking at a Barclays monthly savings account [1] which pays out 3.20 gross rate pa, now to me, pa means per annum but he Barclays site makes it seems as though it is monthly, so I could use a question answering:

If I invest £20, after one month will I receive 3.2% in interest (meaning I would then have £20.64 or would I receive 3.2% interest over the year and actually only get say £20.06 after the first month?

This being said, would anyone in the UK recommend a different savings account / method of savings, I'm only really willing to go for extremely low risk methods which are government backed against collapse up to the level I'm investing such as banks.

(for the record i'm looking to invest £20 every month and leave the money in, so I will have £240 + compound interest after the first year, then I will reevaluate the amount I am putting in and hopefully increase it based on results so far)

[1] - http://www.barclays.co.uk/Savings/MonthlySavingsaccount/P1242558345488