Vanguard Life Strategy

latecomer

I guess the missing areas are the riskier ones by either geography, sector or company size. I think what I should do is just get started and worry about the additional bits later.

That BlackRock fund looks interesting but then I'd guess that most funds would look interesting to me at the moment

Thanks for the replies.

Final question - which platforms are people using if they are holding a Vanguard LS and additional funds too? (I will have a read back over the last few pages later on to see if any are mentioned).

Archi_Bald

Up to £10K, you will do best with a platform that charges a %age of your fund value, such as Charles Stanley. Above that, Harrgreaves Lansdown will beat them with a flat £2/month. Though HL will probably change their charging mechanism at some stage. I got mine with them.

There's a comparison of brokers in general, with a mention of those that do Vanguard: http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

latecomer

Thanks Archi - I am already reading through that page (and most of the others!) at the moment. The plan is for the initial funding to be around £10k (depending on whether I sell my RM shares or not) but I've not yet decided on regular investments yet - I'd like to but have other things to consider too.

stardust09

How does the dividend part of the VLS Acc work? I heard that they don't do dividend payments but it's something like the cost per unit of your stock increases? I really don't understand it. If that's right and you don't receive a dividend statement or anything, how can you work out how much it's growing by? I can't go on stock price alone as I purchased the VLS in the Spring, then the market's been going down since then and have yet to go in the black with it! Only £7 under my purchase price now, though, so am nearly back to where I started...!

Thanks for any advice, in advance.

JohnRo

http://monevator.com/income-units-versus-accumulation-units-difference/

black_taxi_2

When im Mortgage Free next year I will just swap £800+ monthly payments to vanguard

Having looked at all the options,will be putting 10k a year into vanguard lifestyle 60/40 stock/shares isa

automatic rebalancing and low costs won it for me

takesyourchances

That is a nice goal to aim for and certainly £800 per month going into your Vanguard will certainly pad things up for you

My S&S ISA has the VLS 60% and the 6 side funds.

The simple SIPP I started recently is a sole VLS 80%. I upped the payment a bit going into it this month as my S&S ISA is nearly filled and I could well keep this SIPP just the sole VLS 80%, time will tell

Any general opinion on this and I am getting ahead here, at 34 years old soon, how long would people in general keep a VLS80% in the 80/20 equity to bond ratio?

I know there is no clear answer and it can be changed to VLS60% and so in in later years or more bonds added etc but would anyone envision keeping a VLS80% the whole way through to retirement?

Might not be wording this the best but interested to hear opinions as I know some people on the board have the VLS solely in their SIPP..

I am comfortable with the VLS as Black Taxi said, auto re-balancing and costs etc. I have been considering most of the year transferring my Halifax Stakeholder pension over to an SIPP for the VLS.

I was happy to increase my payment to my SIPP VLS 80% but not to my Halifax Stakeholder, so maybe that is telling me something! I will consider it more and could transfer the 15K Stakeholder balance to my SIPP VLS80% and my Stakeholder contribution and my employers as I keep feeling that it is not the ideal pension and with a bank. I started it in my 20s.

At the moment I am paying into both and this was mainly down to wanting to increase pension payments but not to Halifax and despite looking at various pension options and providers I kept coming back to a VLS again.

My S&S ISA has the funds mixed in, at the moment my SIPP is the single VLS 80%, could stay that way or keep it in a passive format with the Vanguard Small Companies tracker as a complement but that would not come if at all until the investment increases in the VLS80%.

Just interested in any opinions if this makes sense

mf78

I'm doing it similar, but the other way around. My Sipp (transferred from an old stakeholder pension) is a mix of funds and my S&S ISA is solely a VLS 80% Equity, being drip fed every month. Theres a lot to be said for the simple VLS approach. It cuts down on dealing fees for a start, when you otherwise would be investing into several funds.

As for bonds, you can either change the VLS % when you wish to, or just buy some bonds or bond funds alongside it. I'm hoping that at some point in the next 30 years bonds will be a better buy than they are now, and will put more into them then.

stardust09

mf78 wrote: »

As for bonds, you can either change the VLS % when you wish to, or just buy some bonds or bond funds alongside it. I'm hoping that at some point in the next 30 years bonds will be a better buy than they are now, and will put more into them then.

By 'change', I presume you mean you have to sell one VLS fund and buy another one? Just checking there's not a more simple way to do it that I don't know about!

Thanks.

youngsaver1995

Invested 40% of my portfolio into the Vanguard Life Strategy 80% Equity in August, as I like that it is a fund of funds. Pleased with it so far, up 3.42%. Not as much as one of my other funds, the Standard Life UK Equity Unconstrained, which is up 7.3%, but that has been much more volatile over the last couple of months.