Vanguard Life Strategy

Shark

Decided am going to buy full £12k S&S ISA in to Acc 100% vanguard lifestrategy at start of ISA season.

Looking like iWeb is by far the cheapest option.

Rest of my portfolio is in HL which I am deciding if I will transfer it over

takesyourchances

Well done on deciding to go with the VLS for this years ISA, looking forward to getting back to the allowance next month after a last small drip feed today for this years allowance.

At the moment I am still with HL having only started just over 16 months ago, at the moment I have 6 managed funds as well as the VLS and still deciding what to do. I liked the HL set up and ease of web site and at the moment fee wise is not massive changes but in time the portfolio will grow.

Anyway, looking forward to getting some more invested next month as well and looking ahead

yatinsardana

I know it's a silly question and I know for a fact that it has been answered previously in the forum (and being a regular reader, I've read the answer too) but I can't find it and so I wanted to ask a quick question.
I want to start making regular investments in VLS. Now how easy or hard is it to sell part or all of your "holdings" in VLS or any fund even. I think I've read it somewhere else that it takes 2-3 days? Can someone give me an idea as to if it's just a matter of giving your broker or the fund instructions that you want to sell x amount of money and it happens or is it more complicated than that?

I'm with HL and this was my first year investing and I've only invested in stocks until now.

le_loup

You tell H-L the number of units or the amount of money you wish to raise and they do the sale the following trading day and you can access the cash four days after that. Very easy.

yatinsardana

le_loup wrote: »

You tell H-L the number of units or the amount of money you wish to raise and they do the sale the following trading day and you can access the cash four days after that. Very easy.

Thanks, that sounds straight forward!

Taoism

Hi
This is possibly not the right place to do this but please be gentle with me if it isn't.
Should I worry about diversification if I wanted to put all of our 400k inheritance in vls40 in one platform? We are 60 and 63, are eligible for state pension in a few years but have no other pension. We have a modest income at the moment. We can wait a year or two before we start drawing income from the fund.
Should we use more than one platform and should we add to vls40 or supplement it with others index trackers, or other fund of funds?

le_loup

Platform makes no difference, the money is in the fund, not the platform. Chose a platform with a fixed charge.
The 40% fund is OK, if not very exciting. At your age, you could live a long time and 60% of your fund will be in low growth, low income, mainly government bonds. The 60% or even 80% fund may be better.
As for diversity ... you could not be much more diversified than the VLS funds.

colalba

Taoism I just wanted to emphasis le loup's point about picking a platform with fixed charges not percentage based. With that amount to invest the saving could be around £1400 pa.


Also I am fairly certain with that sort of value you can invest directly with vanguard if you chose to.

bowlhead99

le_loup wrote: »

The 40% fund is OK, if not very exciting. At your age, you could live a long time and 60% of your fund will be in low growth, low income, mainly government bonds. The 60% or even 80% fund may be better.

Agreed with that

As for diversity ... you could not be much more diversified than the VLS funds.

Can't agree with that.

Some of your money is in bonds. The rest is in equities. The equities money is all invested in the largest publicly listed companies across the world, weighted to the very biggest ones.


What percentage of this "not bonds" money is invested in companies worth 'only' a billion or two? What percentage of your money is invested in companies worth a few hundred million? Or companies worth a few tens of millions?

Pretty much nothing.

Or in the huge number of companies around the world that are owned by private investment funds but produce billions in revenue, like Heinz or Dell or Thames Water?

Nothing

How much of your portfolio is in real estate (corporate or residential property).

Nothing

In an economic down-turn, what proportion of it will be invested using techniques that can benefit from falling share prices, interest or exchange rate differentials to produce a positive absolute return when 'the market' is down?

Nothing

I could go on but expect you can see the point.


'Off the shelf' portfolio funds are handy when you are investing £1k or £10k, they could easily be your only investment. Maybe even at £50k if you didn't want to think too hard. I have more than that but still have a chunk of Lifestrategy in the core of one of my portfolios, as no doubt do others here.

At some point though, you need to consider your attitude to risk and your actual life goals (for example, maybe you'll be looking for something skewed towards inflation-proof income; or maybe your income's fine and you don't expect to spend the last £50k of the £400k until you're 90 so have a 30-year time horizon for some of it). Either way, a fund that simply invests cheaply in bonds and big companies is not necessarily right for you to ride along over the course of retirement.

Taoism, I would take a look at the responses on your other thread more dedicated to your situation. Sorry if this comes off as patronising but you have never had £400k before, and your wealth has never depended to a great extent on your ability to understand and select investments. Now it does. You can learn to DIY or you can pay a professional to come up with a mix. The former route is harder and it is only cheaper if you avoid the mistakes that some of us have made while looking after our portfolios over 20-30 years of saving and investing towards the retirement goal. You have got to retirement age and all of a sudden a chunk of cash lands in your lap without the 20 years practice.

The right thing to do is not necessarily look for the fund on the shelf with the lowest apparent fees, just because some other people are doing that, and spend every penny of your available cash on that one fund. Fee is one piece, risk is another piece, return is another. You need to take some time to consider all the options, including considering spending some percentage of your initial pot on buying advice from an IFA.

Or of course you can buy a product off the shelf that just says 'roll up roll up, get yer bonds and equities here, what percent equities do you want sir?'. It's a solution that can work for many people but their successes could arguably be more down to luck than judgement.

gadgetmind

bowlhead99 wrote: »

What percentage of your money is invested in companies worth a few hundred million?

Or in the huge number of companies around the world that are owned by private investment funds but produce billions in revenue, like Heinz or Dell or Thames Water?

In an economic down-turn, what proportion of it will be invested using techniques that can benefit from falling share prices, interest or exchange rate differentials to produce a positive absolute return when 'the market' is down?

Smaller companies and private equity add to costs but what they add to returns is less clear. As for the rather trendy Absolute Return, many of these produce absolutely no return!

How much of your portfolio is in real estate (corporate or residential property).

If you read the Vanguard literature, this is very deliberate as most investors will be over-exposed to property via their primary residence.

I could go on but expect you can see the point.

I do see your point, and I personally diversify beyond LS, but only because I can do so without adding too much to my costs. Even so, I do question whether my added diversification and complexity will benefit me long term.. Back-testing suggests it should, but in the real world?

have a chunk of Lifestrategy in the core of one of my portfolios, as no doubt do others here.

I use Vanguard ETFs to achieve roughly the same effect but with more diversity and lower costs. However, this does require that I understand asset allocation, put in the work, and don't over-trade.

For most people, it would be very easy to do far worse than just slapping everything into a VLS fund.