Vanguard Life Strategy

Carpi09

Newbie2saving wrote: »

Good plan! I always feel so much better once decisions are made.

I am in my mid 30's and have the 80% VG acc. I wanted to take a little more risk and liked the breakdown of products within the fund. Pleased with my choice to date. I'm also with HL.

All the best (& for the move to Cyprus!)

takesyourchances wrote: »

Excellent news Carpi09 and best of luck also with it all, when opening mine last week I found the process very simple with HL and nice site to use and also their smartphone app is very good also.

I also opened with £2000 and I have changed my monthly now to £150 and in a few months will look at £200 and maybe another bit of a lump sum.

Great with your regular saver as well. After going with this fund last week I feel very happy with this decision for an investment.

Good luck with it all :beer:

Best regards.

Thank you! :beer:

Best of luck to you too!

Lets hope 2013 and beyond will be a good one!

ColdIron

A quick question if I may, why would anyone choose the 'Inc' flavour the LifeStrategy fund? The yield seems very low and it's really a growth fund
I can understand 'Acc' on say UK Equity Income funds, as it's reinvested but not the other way around

mark55man

I would say that you need to be clear what you are saving for - you may not know where you will be in 3 years, but if you know you are using this for retirement or when you keave the forces you probably have longer than you think.

For my kids Junior ISAs I have 8k in 60% and 4K in 80%. Over 3 months they have performed similarly the 80% ahead by 6% to 5%. However we have just seen an equity surge.

Its a very difficult time for anyone investing - people talk of a bond bubble so go high in equity, but others say that is years off. equally some are talking of a stock market crash and others of a major surge - one of them will be right you just don't want to be in the wrong place.

I think if it was me, I would go for the 80% as it has a bit more worldwide exposure than the 60% which is mainly developed. An alternative would be to go for the 60% with most of your money but put a little bit into a riskier fund - eg a specialist emerging markets fund

finally to be truly safe you might consider the following year putting a little into property or commodities - each dimension of diversity helps reduce the risk of a major wipe out. This is called asset allocation and is very complicated. In a nutshell you would make a great start with either 60% or 80% and I would go for it, but try and do a bit of reading as for next year and whether you might want to build on your intial stake or do something different or a mixture

HTH

mark55man

ps by property or commodity I don't mean buying a house or a thimble of gold, I mean having a small %age in a fund that invests in eg commercial property or oil/precious metals/agri-business

Totton

A quick question if I may, why would anyone choose the 'Inc' flavour the LifeStrategy fund?

I agree it is a strange decision to opt for the Inc option when it is just around 2%. Here's my reasons for choosing to do so - my historical choice was always Acc but now I prefer to take the Income and reinvest, sometimes into a different fund sometimes not. Investing in a fund is zero cost so I see no problem taking the Inc, there are no charges to do so other than my LifeStrategy fund where I get hit for the .25% charged by Vanguard. Lastly my reasons include the fun of seeing the dividends! :-)

ColdIron

Cheers Totton I see your rationale and it is nice to see the dividends come in
I suppose I did something similar with Templeton Global Bond which doesn't have an Acc flavour but I still wanted in on it and used some of the dividends to pay for platform fees on another fund

Carpi09

Quick question.

Originally I opened the account with £2000 but there was no intial charge.

Today I added a further amount of £3000 and was charged a levy fee of 0.24%

When it takes monthly dirtect debit from me, does that incur any charges?

I am with HL, Vanguard Life Strategy 80%

Thanks.

Blackdog

Carpi09 wrote: »

Quick question.

Originally I opened the account with £2000 but there was no intial charge.

Today I added a further amount of £3000 and was charged a levy fee of 0.24%

When it takes monthly dirtect debit from me, does that incur any charges?

I am with HL, Vanguard Life Strategy 80%

Thanks.

There is a 0.24% charge for all money you invest in the Vanguard 80% with HL. I am sure you would have paid this on your original investment as well. It is stated in the summary details of the fund on the HL website.
You may not have seen it as a charge on your inital investment but would have got slightly less units than you would have done without the 0.24% charge. Yes you will pay 0.24% on monthly contributions. This 0.24% is a one off charge so not much to worry about at this low level, it is annual charges you need to worry about.
Don't forget there is also a £2 a month platform fee. The more you invest the less significant the platform fee becomes for instance it works out less than 0.5% per year on your £5k.
I have this fund with HL so you are in good company!

ccbrowning

I just went through my purchases and sales over the last year and the levy fee is not listed as a separate line item on any of them. I'm sure I'm paying, but it must be listed somewhere else that I'm just not seeing.

Blackdog

ccbrowning wrote: »

I just went through my purchases and sales over the last year and the levy fee is not listed as a separate line item on any of them. I'm sure I'm paying, but it must be listed somewhere else that I'm just not seeing.

That's correct it is not a charge as such but you get 0.24% less units everytime you invest.