How much is enough?

capital0ne wrote: »

Not too bad a choice, you could just put all your money in RIT - ROT Capital Partners - this from their web site:

"£1,000 invested in RIT at inception in 1988 would be worth in excess of £30,000 today, compared to ~£6,500 if invested in the ACWI¹. In the last three years (to June 30th 2017) share price total return has been over 50%."

"RIT Capital Partners plc is an Investment Trust chaired by Lord Rothschild, which aims to protect and enhance shareholders wealth over the long term.
Since listing on the London Stock Exchange in 1988, we have generated a share price total return of 12.9% per annum for our shareholders."
Not many people could claim 12.9% per year over the last 30 years.

I think you may have missed the point of a Wealth Preservation Portfolio. To make it clear the objective is to be able to continue my lifestyle during a major crash lasting several years. But in the meantime the portfolio must at least match inflation.

RIT Capital Partners is the least certain long term component of my WP portfolio. During the 2008/2009 crash it dropped around 20% whilst the other WP funds I hold barely twitched. It is only there because it has a stated objective of Wealth Preservation.

Investing isnt about maximising return, it's about meeting objectives.

But you must not put all your hard earned finds into a single investment - it must be spread around.

You can co this easily with four or five investments in to cover UK, Global equities, Property, Bonds and cash. (bonds may be too risky at the moment)

People will tell you it's too hard, but in reality it isn't.

They will also tell you to pay an IFA - you can do it yourself easily

What isnt so easy is to identify your objectives and assign the appropriate allocation of investments to meeting them. That is why some people need an IFA. Real life investment with life changing amounts of money cannot be reduced down to selecting an xx in VLSxx.

They will say 4 or 5 investments in your balanced portfolio isn't enough, you'll be given examples with 10-15 selections. Pointless - all you've achieved is an expensive tracker fund

The WP portfolio isnt intended to be "balanced". It is intended to take advantage of the best active management skills I can find to achieve the objectives whilst avoiding excessive dependence on any one manager/sector/asset type.

My Growth 100% equity portfolio consists of 12 active funds individually chosen to provide the asset allocation I want. It is very far from being a global tracker - for a start it's more than 50% medium and small companies. So far it has outperformed VLS100 every year.

aajax42 wrote: »

If all that scrimping and saving, worrying about the price and looking for bargains means more for the taxman, or donations to charity then it definitely wasn't worth it.

if I die tomorrow, then it wasn't worth it (except I would probably have worked an extra six years, and be worrying if I have enough). If, on the other hand, I'm still alive and active at 107 (40 years from now) and still can afford to buy what I want when I want it, who cares if the taxman is going to take a cut (though there are ways to mitigate that), and I can think of several local charities and non-for-profits that could benefit greatly from a bequest.

Unless you know the date of your death and can plan to spend everything by that date exactly you will either run out of money, or have some left over. I definitely prefer that last option.

Linton wrote: »

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5719527&page=2

See #34

Linton Growth: £106078
Linton Wealth preservation: £101419

Out of interest VLS100 - 100000/103016/102655/104727

Note that in the past month (5th December) I sold out of one fund in the Growth portfolio and distributed the proceeds to a couple of the others. I also added in £200 spare cash. How to deal with this on the Invest-off isnt clear. What I did was....

1) Reset the % fund allocations to match what the actual portfolio was showing on the 6th December.
2) Reset the total in the Invest-off portfolio to match the Internal Rate of Return on the actual portfolio since 30th September up to the 6th December.

New allocation:

Artemis Global Growth - 18.5%
Schroder QEP US Core Inst Acc - 15.9%
Threadneedle European Small Companies - 11.78%
Fidelity Asian Values Trust - 9.62%
F&C US Smaller Companies C Inc - 7.74%
Jupiter European Opportunities Trust - 7.47%
JPM Natural Resources C Acc - 7.09%
Baillie Gifford Japanese Smaller Companies B Acc - 5.79%
Marlborough UK Special Situations - 5.14%
Blackrock Frontiers Investment Trust - 4.33%
Neptune UK Mid Cap C Acc - 4.07%
AXA Framlington Health Z Acc - 2.57%

Not too large a portfolio then :beer:

Cheers

... assuming your investments return a consistent 4% p.a forever.
Which might not happen.

A question to which there is no answer as it depends on the income coming in and the spending going out! I've always worked on the principles my parents followed which was to never have any debt other than a mortgage. Luckily, I always had a reasonable salary and could save more than we spent. We had paid off our mortgage before I retired in in September, 2013 at the age of 68. In the 4 years or so since I retired we have increased our standard of living in terms of more holidays, eating out a lot more and generally spending more to the point where we now more or less spend all of our income without reducing or increasing our savings. However, if I ever found that my income couldn't support that standard of living things like holidays would be cut very swiftly. One thing I do know is that I'm far, far better at cutting my expenditure than I am at increasing my income!