Investment

capt-hilts

Advice required which route should I take .cash Available 30k + £500 per month with 15 years to invest . Live with girlfriend , no debt, good credit rating .
1/ buy a property to let
2/ buy 1 of various types of investment bonds with cash and save monthly
3/ an alternative ??

Totton

Possibly Vanguard Life Strategy have something to suit, they offer a mix of fixed interest and equity funds, I use the 80% fund just now but initially used the 40% fund during the stock market problems.

http://www.vanguard-lifestrategy.co.uk

HTH,
Mickey

xylophone

Are you and your girlfriend using your ISA allowances?

capt-hilts

Thanks for replys , I should have added to initial post that I have no investments at the moment and also a newbie to ISA 's and the like . Would the income from a buy to let plus the sale of the property at the end of the 15 years ( less cost of maint , ins etc ) out weigh advantages of investment in shares or visa versa ? Appologies for my ignorance on this subject . I am studying and attempting to understand the massive world involved in this subject !!

typistretired

You have to be careful with buy to let. A few close family members bought buy to let property over ten years ago with a view to it providing a pension fund later in life. But the property is worth less now than when they bought it.

grey_gym_sock

in some 15 year periods, shares would beat BTL; in others, the vice versa. so no-one knows for sure.

there is a lot more specific risk with BTL - i.e. you'd probably just buy 1 property. what if the tenants don't play the rent, trash the place, and it takes a few months to evict them? (not saying it's likely - just to state the worst case.) with shares, it's very easy to spread your money over lots of shares, so a single company going bust wouldn't bother you at all.

also, you can easily add £500 to month (or much less) to shares. you can't add to a BTL, until you've got enough to buy another property.

dunstonh

typistretired wrote: »

You have to be careful with buy to let. A few close family members bought buy to let property over ten years ago with a view to it providing a pension fund later in life. But the property is worth less now than when they bought it.

Plus, you typically need 6-8 properties to get it to work as pension provision as you need to repay the mortgages and capital gains tax and the amount left is rarely enough with a single property to come close to providing what you need in retirement.

atush

Do you own the property you live in Do you have a pensions?

2 obvious places to start.

raindudu

grey_gym_sock wrote: »

in some 15 year periods, shares would beat BTL; in others, the vice versa. so no-one knows for sure.

there is a lot more specific risk with BTL - i.e. you'd probably just buy 1 property. what if the tenants don't play the rent, trash the place, and it takes a few months to evict them? (not saying it's likely - just to state the worst case.) with shares, it's very easy to spread your money over lots of shares, so a single company going bust wouldn't bother you at all.

also, you can easily add £500 to month (or much less) to shares. you can't add to a BTL, until you've got enough to buy another property.

Sounds very interesting. I am also new here. So... Could you please let me know how we can buy shares? Any agent I can use? I don't want too much hussle... Thanks a lot.

capt-hilts

My girlfriend has a mortgage on her property but no pension , I have 1 small pension from company , and an on going pension to which my current company pays into . BTL appears to be a minefield at worse case sinario , so I will continue studying the investment via shares route , thanks for help folks .

sabretoothtigger

typistretired wrote: »

You have to be careful with buy to let. A few close family members bought buy to let property over ten years ago with a view to it providing a pension fund later in life. But the property is worth less now than when they bought it.

Surely the main thing is the rental return not the capital value. If they needed a liquid investment then property was a bad idea from the start

This is why people soak up so much gov debt, its supposedly the easiest thing to sell but it sure sucks on income especially in Japan where its almost zero.
Thats why the capital value is going to plummet sooner or later and your house if useful should be fine eventually