Where to put my £150 per month? Which tracker funds?

smellymel222

Hi all

At the moment I've got £150 per month to invest into tracker funds. I know it's not very much but at the moment I am concentrating on paying off my mortgage. I want to start investing now so in 3 years when I have more money to invest, I hopefully well have more of a feel for investing. That's my theory anyway!!

Anyway, back to the question, I cant decide whether to invest £50 each into say a FTSE all share tracker, £50 into a north America tracker and £50 into either an Asia excluding Japan or a emerging markets tracker or just put £150 a month into something like Blackrock consensus 100 fund which has a little bit of everything.

Just trying to get an idea on people's opinions on it

I'm in my early 30's so don't mind taking a bit of a risk

Thanks

jimjames

Personally I would split 3 ways as you have suggested. If you use a fund supermarket like Cavendish Online then you won't pay any extra platform charges for your investments, at least not at the moment.

dunstonh

With a small amount like that I wouldnt look to pick single sector funds but use a portfolio fund.

smellymel222

Thanks for the replys. Anyone else got any opinions?

jamesd

Two of the markets you've named are above their long term averages. US and UK. Why not pick places that are down instead of up, so you buy at a cheaper time?

You might consider the Jupiter Merlin fund range. They make asset allocation decisions and that's of significant use compared to trackers.

smellymel222

thanks, ive looked at the funds and the only trouble is the higher TER as they are often above 1.5% as opposed to less than 0.5%. since I am only investing small amounts, I didnt want higher costs eating into my money.

What do people think about this? Should i go for cheaper TER?

dunstonh

Should i go for cheaper TER?

If you are compromising investment strategy for the sake of 0.5-0.75% p.a. then you should go with investment strategy (or use a tracker based portfolio fund if you prefer).

i.e. if your investment strategy costs you long term average of 2.5% pa. then worrying about 0.75% is silly. Better to get strategy right with cost secondary.

sooty&sweep

Hi

I'm thinking of starting to invest a monthly amount. I'm looking at investing through Hargreaves Lansdown. You can choose to invest in a portfolio of funds selected by them or you can select your own. They have a top 150 funds which they recommend.
My mum uses them and so far has been pleased.

Jen

Perelandra

jimjames wrote: »

Personally I would split 3 ways as you have suggested. If you use a fund supermarket like Cavendish Online then you won't pay any extra platform charges for your investments, at least not at the moment.

For some of the new clean share classes, Fidelity do now charge a platform fee- and Cavendish customers can't escape this. In some cases, the clean version of the fund works out to be more expensive than the retail versions (HSBC trackers being a good example). So, unfortunately, you can now pay higher platform charges overall even through Cavendish.

smellymel222

Thanks for everyone replys, it's giving me something to think about. That's another thing I am struggling with is what platform to use especially with the way they charge changing over the next year.

badger09

But you're not tied to any platform provider for life.

Once the changes to charges have settled down, you could transfer to a more competitive provider for your particular mix of investments.