ISA or General Investing Apps?

The usual recommendation is to establish an emergency 'rainy day' fund of 3-6 months worth of outgoings in readily-accessible cash form, i.e. savings not investments.

Also, making sure that you take advantage of the tax efficiencies of pension contributions should be a priority.

Once you have both of these in place, and assuming your property needs are taken care of, then you could start to consider investing for long-term (5+ year) money. Using a S&S ISA is the most tax-advantageous way of doing this - you should bear in mind that there are then another couple of layers, namely platforms (e.g. Hargreaves Lansdown and many others, including Moneyfarm) and underlying investments that are held within these platforms (funds, equities, etc).

Search this forum for threads about Moneyfarm, in which you'll see that many dismiss it as gimmicky and expensive (but others defend it to the hilt) versus the more mainstream platforms.

Read up on the articles at http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/investments/ and sites like Monevator and Motley Fool to get up to speed with investing, but follow the above steps first....

luke623 wrote: »

I watched a lot of you tube videos on how investing works and read many articles. I then compared many different investment platforms and came to the conclusion that Hargreaves and Lansdown was the best for me. I opened a Lifetime ISA as i am saving for a house. I can invest £4000 a year into funds/stocks and receive a 25% bonus on deposits but can only use the money for buying a house or retirement. This is just me and my situation but you can also open up a normal stocks and shares ISA.

As i was limited to depositing £4000 a year (£333 per month) into my Lifetime ISA, i decided to look at other investment options as i had more money i wanted to save/invest. I cam across a peer 2 peer lending site called Funding Circle. You can invest as little as £20 into a business and receive high rates of interest back. I am currently receiving 8.9% interest but i believe the average is about 7%.

This is how i save my money as the low interest rates offered by a lot of banks is low.

Seems very rash to me to invest (with capital at risk) simply because (capital-protected) savings rates are low! Are you in a position to defer your property purchase by a few years if/when your investments lose significant value?

As you'll have seen in my previous post (and your YouTube videos no doubt), platform selection and investment selection are two entirely different processes and the latter is far more important - what is your HL LISA money actually invested in?

Glad you mentioned P2P though, I neglected to include that earlier, although again it's not without risk.

eskbanker wrote: »

Seems very rash to me to invest (with capital at risk) simply because (capital-protected) savings rates are low! Are you in a position to defer your property purchase by a few years if/when your investments lose significant value?

As you'll have seen in my previous post (and your YouTube videos no doubt), platform selection and investment selection are two entirely different processes and the latter is far more important - what is your HL LISA money actually invested in?

Glad you mentioned P2P though, I neglected to include that earlier, although again it's not without risk.

I am not in a rush to buy a property so i can wait an extra few years if the price of the fund did go down.I will be investing money into other things as i do not want all my money sitting in one fund.My money is currently in HL Multi-Manager Income & Growth Trust. The 25% bonus will also act as a buffer.

This is just what i have done, perhaps my attitude to risk is more lax than others. I may be young and naive but i'm not rich or well off or what ever you want to call it by putting money into low interest banks.

Luke