Vanguard Life Strategy

gadgetmind

My only other comment is that 40% fixed interest might be a trifle high for your age, but this all depends on your attitude to volatility.

After reading "Smarter Investing" I suspect you might decide to go higher with equities, but let's see.

takesyourchances

Yes thats true about the 40% fixed income and my age, I think the biggest step was starting into some form of equities, as I then got more comfortable after taking the step with the passive long term investing idea and that was part of the reason looking at a side tracker running at a lower pot % to give a little more equity exposure and covering some caps outside the LS 60%.

I will be ordering the smarter investing book this weekend to read, looking forward to that and maybe this can be relooked at once my pot increases higher.

If the vangaurd global tracker would give more equity exposure and cover a few gaps when the pot size is more healthy I could consider it but would rather take more time than jump into it straight away and grow the investment up and extra fees approaching 3k at the moment.

Thank you again.

adewalton

Hi,
Can someone tell me the buy price for the VLS 80% - 20% fund?
I am trying to add it to a watch portfolio?
I know is something like 11291.99 but just how much is that?
In other words how many units would I get for a lump sum investment of £1000?
This would be a starter lump sum, I then intend to drip feed into said fund each month.
What do you guys think of H & L to hold the fund?
I know they charge and there is a £2 per month platform fee but this seems the norm?
Your thoughts?
Cheers!!

innovate

adewalton wrote: »

Hi,
Can someone tell me the buy price for the VLS 80% - 20% fund?
I am trying to add it to a watch portfolio?
I know is something like 11291.99 but just how much is that?
In other words how many units would I get for a lump sum investment of £1000?
This would be a starter lump sum, I then intend to drip feed into said fund each month.
What do you guys think of H & L to hold the fund?
I know they charge and there is a £2 per month platform fee but this seems the norm?
Your thoughts?
Cheers!!

Are you sure you should be investing in funds if you don't know how to look up prices and working out how many units you get for your money?

adewalton

I know the price!
It's just where the decimal point goes....... If you get my point ... No pun intended!!!

JohnRo

GBP denominated funds and share prices are always quoted in pence, there are probably exceptions but I don't know any.

westy22

The LS 80% Income Fund is £112.9199 per unit. All of the LS funds are similar as they all started at £100.00 per unit at launch 18 months ago.

If you are using Google Finance to track Vanguard prices then there is a bit of oddity in that Google state it is GBX rather than GBP yet you need to enter it as 112.9199 rather than as 11291.99 as you would expect.

takesyourchances

To add a bit more into the mix of thoughts recently, as I am going through an early 30's financial shake up at the moment ....I am dusting off financial decisions from my early 20's etc for a new direction, part of that was cashing in the AXA Bonus cashbuilder I had early and entering into the S&S ISA and the Vanguard Lifestrat 60%

This is another thing on my mind lately, pension. I have a Stakeholder pension from my mid 20's with Halifax, there will be in and around 15K in it now. I would know the exact amount if they had not removed it off the online banking for to see it it seems I would need to call them to amend anything or ask for a balance at present. Anyway, I am forming the opinion the Stakeholder with Halifax is not for me now, I can afford to put more into a pension now than my mid 20's and I want to also up my pension investment but feel this is the wrong place now for my pension as from what I see it is limited in a Stakeholder and now I am thinking of transferring this to an SIPP Pension.

I see with HL were my S&S ISA is I can do a transfer to an SIPP Pension with over 10K and I have over that ok and around 15K.

I am thinking that another Vanguard Fund in an SIPP has got to be a better home for the long term for my pension and future contributions than this Halifax Stakeholder at present as it seems little scope for higher investing amounts that I want to do as well.

As this is locked down for a minimum of 22 years plus from now, 33 now, I am thinking maybe the Vanguard Lifestrat 80% equity could be an option in an SIPP instead. Any thoughts?

For those of you who have been kind enough to comment on my previous posts of recent days on my 2 tracker idea for my Vanguard 60% fund in my S&S ISA maybe running with the Vanguard Global tracker, with a bigger starting off pot in an SIPP (15K) would this be a good blend for these two funds running together ( VG Lifestrat 80% & VG Global with maybe future scope added), or stay with a Vanguard 80% maybe?

Apologies in advance for those who commented previous on the S&S ISA with this I feel this Halifax Stakeholder is not for me now and this could be the shake up it needs so any comments please again is greatly welcomed :T

Best regards.

bowlhead99

takesyourchances wrote: »

I am thinking that another Vanguard Fund in an SIPP has got to be a better home for the long term for my pension and future contributions than this Halifax Stakeholder at present as it seems little scope for higher investing amounts that I want to do as well.

What do you mean by 'little scope for investing higher amounts'. Are you saying the Halifax pension does not allow you to invest the full amount in any tax year that HMRC would allow you to contribute?

I am thinking maybe the Vanguard Lifestrat 80% equity could be an option in an SIPP instead. Any thoughts?

Well, it is an option. My general feeling is that Self Invested Personal Pensions are for people who are experienced and know what they want to hold out of tens of thousands of options. With respect, you don't seem to be an experienced investor.

By contrast, Halifax as a bank product is never going to have the cheapest or widest choice of funds however there will be options in their range with which to build out a global portfolio.

For better or worse I have 35 holdings in a SIPP (including shares, ETFs, ITs and funds) and could not have constructed that portfolio within a stakeholder plan. So it's great that SIPPs exist but not everyone needs one.

The H-L sipp is a popular product but mass market popular does not always equate to best value and I noted they charge a premium on shares, ITs and ETFs of 0.5% up to £40k which put me off when moving my own pension.

For those of you who have been kind enough to comment on my previous posts of recent days on my 2 tracker idea for my Vanguard 60% fund in my S&S ISA maybe running with the Vanguard Global tracker, with a bigger starting off pot in an SIPP (15K) would this be a good blend for these two funds running together ( VG Lifestrat 80% & VG Global with maybe future scope added), or stay with a Vanguard 80% maybe?

With a few thousand invested a lifestrat can make sense (apart from the admin fee to hold it). At 10k your £2 pm is only a quarter of a percent which is not bad. On the next 5k your extra admin fee if you go with another VG fund will be half a percent.

What was the purpose of the 'Global' fund, given the lifestrat is a global largecap equity fund anyway. Do you mean their Global Stock Fund (all world developed), or the Developed World Ex-UK, or the Global Small Cap? The latter is probably better if your SIPP provider carries it and you don't want to be putting yet more money into Apple and Exxon and GE and IBM, Microsoft, Google.

Personally if the 15k lump sum was my only retirement provision with a 20-30+ year time horizon I would not have it going into all largecap equities, I would have a selection of funds including as a minimum some actively managed emerging markets, smaller companies and real estate. You don't need to be in a SIPP to do this - although you probably do if you absolutely must have a Vanguard fund - and if your goal is to invest passively and only look in on it every 6 months it doesn't need to be with the same firm as your ISA provider.

takesyourchances

bowlhead99 wrote: »

What do you mean by 'little scope for investing higher amounts'. Are you saying the Halifax pension does not allow you to invest the full amount in any tax year that HMRC would allow you to contribute?
Well, it is an option. My general feeling is that Self Invested Personal Pensions are for people who are experienced and know what they want to hold out of tens of thousands of options. With respect, you don't seem to be an experienced investor.

By contrast, Halifax as a bank product is never going to have the cheapest or widest choice of funds however there will be options in their range with which to build out a global portfolio.

For better or worse I have 35 holdings in a SIPP (including shares, ETFs, ITs and funds) and could not have constructed that portfolio within a stakeholder plan. So it's great that SIPPs exist but not everyone needs one.

The H-L sipp is a popular product but mass market popular does not always equate to best value and I noted they charge a premium on shares, ITs and ETFs of 0.5% up to £40k which put me off when moving my own pension.
With a few thousand invested a lifestrat can make sense (apart from the admin fee to hold it). At 10k your £2 pm is only a quarter of a percent which is not bad. On the next 5k your extra admin fee if you go with another VG fund will be half a percent.

What was the purpose of the 'Global' fund, given the lifestrat is a global largecap equity fund anyway. Do you mean their Global Stock Fund (all world developed), or the Developed World Ex-UK, or the Global Small Cap? The latter is probably better if your SIPP provider carries it and you don't want to be putting yet more money into Apple and Exxon and GE and IBM, Microsoft, Google.

Personally if the 15k lump sum was my only retirement provision with a 20-30+ year time horizon I would not have it going into all largecap equities, I would have a selection of funds including as a minimum some actively managed emerging markets, smaller companies and real estate. You don't need to be in a SIPP to do this - although you probably do if you absolutely must have a Vanguard fund - and if your goal is to invest passively and only look in on it every 6 months it doesn't need to be with the same firm as your ISA provider.

Thank you for your reply once again, excuse me on the scope part with Halifax stakeholder amounts, I read the information wrong when looking into paperwork last night on it, it does seem to be the same as what HMRC would allow. I stupidly read the out of work contribution part :T basically this pension has been running with my mind elsewhere mainly from I started it.

From my mid twenties I did not look at the Halifax Stakeholder account an awful lot, it was online but when the crash was going on 2008 / 2009 they disappeared the accounts offline, my guess is they did not like people watching their accounts dropping, I recall seeing £500 falling off one week so that is my guess why it went off line to view and to telephone around that period.

While I had a pension going then I was paying in along with work and it was there, it was not my main focus during that time of my 20's, I saved harder into cash ISA's and was interested and buying overseas property (which are owned outright) so my focus then was mainly cash, the Stakeholder was there, with always an interest in equities in conversations with a couple of people I know investing in them, I like global issues and business in general etc but I never actually went down the equity route, asides share based 3 & 5 year bonds were capital was safe. My focus was cash and overseas property during this time.

Now I have done this, I am turning my attention to the S&S ISA which as you know I started with the Lifestat 60% and part of my shake up now is looking at my pension as well for long term investing for the future.

I fully agree, I am not an experienced investor and I am keen to learn hence the many questions

I like the Vanguard Lifestat layout idea as it is a mixture to let me start investing not knowing enough to build a portfolio up which was the attraction, also I know cash is eroding with such low interest rates and I want to invest for the long term.

This is a little background, I am also forming an opinion of banks at the moment rightly or wrongly they are not the best place for my long term money. Part of that is being disillusioned at cash ISA rates as my cash ISA with Halifax is 3% and when it drops in April, Halifax's easy access ISA account seems to be 1.6% at the moment so at the moment that money will not be staying with them come April.

Getting back to the pension, I want to increase payments into this and build it up higher as the 15K in it has reached that with little thought behind it and now I am thinking of better options and to start to increase my overall pension and long term building.

I was looking at the SIPP on HL and thinking of the Vanguard Lifestrat maybe 80% this time, but I know I don't have any experience as an investor and out of so many funds, reading on here, monetator articles and other reviews on Vanguard Lifestrat I picked this for my S&S ISA due to my lack of experience as an off the shelf portfolio as was put in one of the monevator articles.

I know there is other options out there for my pension and other companies as well, HL seems to be popular but as you said maybe other companies. I could stay within Halifax and change that about but not sure on Halifax for the long term and maybe higher fees or their product range being limited, SIPP I was thinking the Vanguard Lifestrat would suit me again given my lack of experience so thought would put the idea out on here.

The side fund /funds I have been referring to, this is looking at the HL site as they don't seem to have the Vanguard Global Small Cap, I looked at the Developed World Ex-UK to widen the global spread, taking some focus off the UK from the Life Strat fund.. I formed the conclusion my S&S ISA has not enough yet for this, so opened this back up for a possible pension amount that could be transferred in from Halifax.

I agree as well with a 20-30 year range (hopefully I can retire early ) that it would be better to diverse from many large cap companies and add small cap or emerging markets. The global spread is a direction I feel I like. I was discussing previously in this topic 3 trackers eventually to further diversify as my S&S ISA grew, but the amounts are not there at the moment I know. So maybe this could apply for a pension.

Vanguard 80% life strat, Vanguard Developed World Ex-UK and to diverse away from large caps in the mainly developed world, add a holding into Asia and Pacific, maybe something like the HSBC Pacific Index Accumulation on a smaller percentage holding of the pot, this seems to be lower fees than other Asian and Pacific funds I was looking at. The 15K divided over a spread like this maybe for a passive pension building block to build on.

This is some thoughts and ideas and background, I am asking lots of questions now to try and get some direction and structure in place for the long term, ideally I want to passively invest long term, leave this to work and accumulate over the long term and not have to be very hands like like individual stock buying and selling.

I will read up on passive investing starting with the Smarter Investing book and keep reading monevator etc and learn and maybe as I gain knowledge add small adjustments in time, other holdings such as real estate etc as you mentioned, small caps etc. Never know in the future maybe some individual stocks.

I guess what I am looking for is a starting structure that is sensible to passively contribute to and to accumulate over the long term and let the years tick on.

Many thanks again, it is appreciated.

Best regards.