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You can find some suggested portfolios on http://monevator.com/category/investing/passive-investing-investing/. Agree with badger09, why have the other stuff when it's already in the Vanguard Lifestrategy. Or why have VLS if you would like to pick yourself.

25% Vanguard 60 (or maybe 80/100 havent decided)
25% FTSE tracker - dont know which one
25% US tracker - again dont know which one
25% some sort of bond / gilt fund, again don't know which one

While I've been trawling loads of funds and found some potentially interesting ones I am not sure how to search for the types of funds I am looking for as they dont seem to be 'classified' in any way that I think about them, so I am struggling to shortlist in order to draw comparisons - can anyone steer me in the right direction?

If you look at the https://www.charles-stanley-direct.co.uk/ website (just an example, as you mentioned you had looked there) they have some 'foundation portfolios' on the front page which show some funds that could complement each other for different goals.

Also when searching for funds you can search by sector using the Investment Management Association sector groupings - perhaps pick something in the Mixed, 40-85% equity classification, or more dedicated regional or industry sectors. The CSD website is a bit clunky, to me it is much easier to add funds to a virtual basket of investments at a site like Trustnet.com and drill into the detail of what they do, how they perform and get the factsheets.

If you are trying to build a portfolio you have to understand what is in it. For example, the Lifestrategy fund is a ready-made portfolio of tracker funds. Take the 80% one. As the name suggests it has 80% in equity trackers and 20% in bond trackers. Imagine that's your £1000 invested with £800 in equities and £200 in bonds. You can see from the factsheet that 20% of its investments are in UK equity index funds. Think £200 in UK. Then there's 33.5% in USA equities (£335). Then developed Europe, Asia etc (20% / £200ish in total) and a small allocation to emerging markets (£62).

So now imagine that whole Vanguard fund is only 25% of your personal total portfolio, and you're going to put the next 3x £1000s in the rest of the portfolio... So you'll buy £1000 of UK tracker and £1000 of US tracker and £1000 of bonds? Looking at the whole £4k, you now have £1200(30%) in bonds, £1200(30%) in UK equities, £1335(33.4%) in US equities, £200 in the entire rest of the developed world and £62 (1.5%) in emerging markets.

Obviously if you went for the VLS 60 instead of the 80 it would be the same except an extra £200 in bonds and £200 less overall in the equities.

To me, your sample portfolio seems to have a lot of UK and US equities and bonds and not much else. It would not be for me. Maybe you really really really like the idea of investing in US and UK trackers at the expense of the other parts of the world? If you didn't want such high concentration in the UK you could simply let your Lifestrategy be a much bigger proportion of your overall portfolio - that's what a lot of other people would do.

Some people, maybe more experienced ones, would just use VLS for general global exposure as 25% of their fund and then buy lots of specialist funds for the other 75%. But to do that they would need to have a firm idea of what other equities or non-equities funds they really wanted, and why. The fact you are just proposing to use the 75% to buy more of the same stuff that you have in the first 25%, but in different proportions, says to me that you are not really ready for that. So, you could go ahead with what you have, as a bit of a gamble, or more realistically, read and research more.

As the investment is presumably going to be long term, then you have plenty of time to decide. But at the moment you are putting your monthly spare money into the expensive Virgin funds. You could easily start putting that into a VLS 40 or 60 right away (getting similar bond exposure and more diversified equity exposure, at lower cost than Virgin). That is what I'd do to start, if I was already happy to be investing in equity and bond trackers - while learning more about fund options. Or alternatively, stop investing entirely for a bit, while working out what it is you really want, and put it in later.

ggb1979 wrote: »

I'm inclined to keep my cash isa, it's paying 2.5% and I like being off the tax man radar for that, plus just can t be bothered messing with multiple current accounts etc also think those deals will soon disappear.

You can be literally certain that your 2.5% ISA deal will also disappear.