Their payouts will be badly dented by the panic that has gripped the markets over the past two weeks as investors fret about rising inflation, higher interest rates and a weakening dollar. The timing of the slump, which has led to shares giving up pretty much all of the gains made so far this year, is laced with bitter irony.

Back in March, SSIA investors were patting themselves on the back, with the Irish Association of Investment Managers, amongst others, predicting that they would be richly rewarded for risking their money on the stock market.

If invested in a managed fund, an early-bird SSIA would have been worth a typical 21,300 at the end of last year, close to 1,000 more than even the highest-yielding deposit alternative, according to the IAIM's calculations.

As stock markets continued to surge in the countdown to maturity, there was every reason to expect that this gap would only get wider, lulling many investors into a false sense of smug security.

Now it appears that markets have waited until the last minute to do their worst, wiping 1,000 a week from the average investment-based SSIAs just as they enter the home stretch.

In deciding where to go from here, it may be useful to ponder some of the stock market truisms that have helped investors weather previous storms.

The first is that markets are driven by greed and fear.

Greed is the reason we chase the easy money when stock prices are already soaring; fear is the reason we lose our shirts by bailing out at the first sign of trouble.

Greed may have contributed to our current predicament; don't make it worse now by succumbing to fear when the going gets tough.

Another truism is that only sellers make losses. As long as you stick with an investment, any drop in its value is a loss on paper only. It does not become real until you sell up and walk away. So hold your nerve, stay invested and try to ride out the storm.

Even if your SSIA matures on Wednesday, you do not have to take what's left of your money and run. All investment-based SSIAs are open-ended so you can hang on for as long as you wish, and even keep saving in the hope of clawing back your losses when conditions improve.

No financial institution is going to turf you out at the end of the SSIA scheme and some even promise special bonuses to keep you saving after the government's 25% top-up comes to an end.

If these crumbs of comfort fail to do the job, ask yourself why you invested in the stock market in the first place. The only reason to hold money in shares is because you decided this is a sensible way to achieve a financial objective, either a specific need or for a general rainy-day fund.

If that objective was less than five years away when you opened your SSIA, the stock market was the wrong place for your savings. There is just too much risk of your plans being blown off course by short-term market fluctuations.

If, on the other hand, your goal remains some way off, the bloodbath of recent weeks . . . or for that matter dizzy heights reached earlier in the year . . . are pretty irrelevant.

They are just part of the rollercoaster ride that makes the stock market the best home for your money, provided you have the time and the bottle to ride out the highs and lows.

So much for the theory. If the reality means you need to raid your SSIA as soon as it matures, you need to take immediate steps to guard against any more trouble.

This involves protecting what's left of your gains by switching out of equities and into something safer.

The good news is that all SSIA providers offer a range of alternatives and, if it's security you're after, your best bet is to switch your savings to a cash fund. This is much the same as money in the bank and you can be sure that, once the switch is made, the value of your SSIA cannot drop any further. Most providers allow a number of free switches between funds every year so you should not be penalised for moving from equities to cash.

Nevertheless, you can end up paying a high price in other ways. Cash funds should pay a rate of interest similar to what you could expect with a bank or credit union deposit. The sting lies in the fees and charges. They can be similar to what you could expect to pay for an equity fund, even though administering a cash fund is nowhere near as complicated as picking a portfolio of shares in hundreds of different companies.

This is why a cash fund can only be considered a shortterm bolt hole, suitable if your SSIA matures in the next month or two. If you have another year to go, as most people do, a big chunk of the interest earned in a cash fund in the next 12 months could be gobbled up in fees.

You could try to switch SSIA providers, pulling your savings out of an equity fund run by an insurance company and moving it to a depositbased SSIA with a bank, building society or credit union. The rules of the SSIA allow for such a move and, by putting your savings on deposit rather than in a cash fund, you will escape the insurance companies' fees and charges.

In reality, however, few SSIA providers will be interested in savers who want to jump horses this late in the day. Switching involves a lot of paperwork and, as far as the banks are concerned, it is just not worth the hassle chasing new business that would be on their books for the next year at most.

The gut reaction of every investor is to dive for cover when things start to go wrong. But this time around try using your head instead.

Reinvesting half and enjoying a safari on the rest

Christine Murphy, from Blackrock, Co Dublin, will be among the first savers in the country to crack open an SSIA when her account matures on Wednesday.

Christine's SSIA was invested with Bank of Ireland and she has decided to reinvest half of the payout for another three years. The rest will be used to pay for a family holiday to Africa.

Although the value of her SSIA has been hit by recent turmoil on world stock markets, Christine believes that stocks and shares are still the best bet over the longer term.

"It's the luck of the draw, " she says.

"I'm fortunate to be able to keep saving for the long term."

Christine's SSIA choices were in"uenced by her husband, a chartered accountant with a track record of successful investing in stocks and shares. "He has tried to get me more interested in investing and we've gone to a few stockbrokers' seminars in recent weeks. My husband has invested in equities in the past and the money he's made has helped to pay for our home. On balance, I'd prefer the stock market to property as an investment."

Since starting the SSIA in 2001, Christine has contracted breast cancer and the savings plan proved to be a useful standby when she had to give up her job as a senior manager with the National Disability Authority.

"You do think about money a lot when you have to give up work, " she says. "You never know what's around the corner and I was glad to have the SSIA money working for me."

Christine is reinvesting half of her SSIA in Bank of Ireland's Special Bonus Investment Plan. It will pay a 25% savings top-up for the first six months, replacing the SSIA bonus that the government was previously paying. Savers can put away from 50 to 1,000 a month, and must commit to to saving for another three years.