child trust fund

grey_lady

thanks Dunston H, can I just ask why you didnt include the Baillie Gifford childrens saving plan in the three options you mentioned above? (the one that Reaper went for)

dunstonh

can I just ask why you didnt include the Baillie Gifford childrens saving plan in the three options you mentioned above? (the one that Reaper went for)

Forgot.....

Reaper

grey_lady wrote: »

Can I ask why you went for the Baille Gifford plan over the F&C? Think I'm going to take a closer look at both of them, also the Po/family friendly unit trust, and I think HL have one top 200 fund that you can pay £25 a month into, and do some kind of comparison with the hsbc tracker, hhmm, I suspect a crystal ball would also be useful!

I can't remember all my reasoning at the time but here is some of it:
* the downside of a tracker is you are probably choosing a very specific market, such as the UK FTSE. By investing in a general worldwide fund you have a fund manager to choose where to put the money. Some of my investments I want to micro-manage, but not this one.
* Investment Trusts (such as Baille Gifford and F&C) may work out cheaper in the long run. When you said

The f&c information gives an example of 5.1% growth after charges (6% before)

what that tells you is that effectively you are paying 0.9% charges per year. Compare that to the TER (Total Expense Ratio) on a Unit Trust such as M&G that you mention and you may well find it is much higher.
* I know those 2 companies will set up the investments for you as a Bare Trust (if that is what you choose to do). Whereas other companies such as Aberdeen won't just telling you unhelpfully to go to a solicitor.
* I slightly prefered the funds at Baille Gifford though there was not much in it. One thing to note is the charges do vary. Their flagship funds are the cheapest - that's Scottish Mortgage for Baille Gifford , and the confusingly similarly named F&C Investment Trust for F&C. So make sure the others justify the extra charges if you want to spread the money out.

There were other reasons but I can't remember what they were now without re-doing all the research. I'm sure they were very good ones though!

Those 2 companies I mentioned were just examples. There are plenty more good choices out there.

grey_lady

Many thanks Reaper.