SOD IT!!! I'm giving up and having a damn good holiday instead!!!

fimonkey

sipar, ... came back to this thread briefly and in answer to your question... I will most likely be happier with who I am and what I want from life, having NOT busted my gut to get onto an over-inflated property ladder. I won't be in a huge debt and depressed in the future, I never said I have no savings! I will continue to work, so I will still have money too! .. in terms of 'disrepecting' others, Read the thread before you jump to this conclusion as you will see I have specifically covered this aspect. However I am entitled to my opinion (as you are yours) and I don't see any reason to be all 'lovey dovey' when that's not how I feel.

And to Brasso,

Sorry, I've not read the whole thread so this point may already have been made, but it seems illogical for you to complain about the way prices have risen in the past year when your late mother's house has been sold in this same period. In other words, you will have benefited from the increase in value of her house, in exactly the same way that you've lost out on the value of property you wanted to buy. If the whole market has remained flat, yes, your target property would be cheaper but you would also have received less on the sale of your mother's house, therefore you would probably still be priced out.[QUOTE] VERY GOOD POINT! However my mothers property was in Leeds so very much cheaper than where I live (and where my life is) in Dorset. I would give every penny back plus all my other savings to have her back with us, but life aint like that.

[ QOTE] Also, is it just me, or does it seem a bit undignified to crow about how you're going to blow all this cash on holidays etc -- money that you received as a consequence of your mother's death?

I am saying that I'm going to do what makes me happy, as my mother would have wanted, and viewing 3 flats a day which aren't what I want, and trying to comprimise purely for the sake of owning, was NOT making me happy! More depressed in fact! MANY FTB's on this board are struggling, if it's what they want then fair enough, but I think if it's making you unhappy then it's time for a re-think

If you were a bit more canny, you could turn that £30K into an investment opportunity and stay well ahead of inflation in the housing market. HPI is on the wane in any case, and we are at or near the top of the market. So in fact, you have the best of both worlds. You've benefitted from the HP bubble, and are thinking about buying property just as it's starting to turn into a buyer's market.[QUOTE] ... would LOVE to be that canny, but I aint the kinda person who can turn a penny into a pound (again read the thread if you can be bothered, though it's a bit long and outdated now, I've already covered that).

But you seem too impatient and too short-sighted to understand this. You'll blow half the money and continue to complain, even when property will start to become affordable again in the next year or two. It's your financial myopia that will keep you priced out, not the state of the market.[QUOTE] I know this, and therefore I WON'T complain, I am making my decisions now with my eyes well open and clear coloured specs (nothing rose tinted for me). I am perfectly capable of taking responsibility for my own actions!

Anyway, thanks all for your interesting and valued input (including the harsh ones, especially the humourous ones)!

Have a good life and live it the way YOU want to live it, not how society dictates you should!

brasso

fimonkey wrote: »

Have a good life and live it the way YOU want to live it, not how society dictates you should!

"Society" doesn't dictate that much, and the more money you have, the less it dictates to you. The point I was trying to make is that you have the chance to secure your future and have the last laugh but instead you're likely to end up blowing your capital in a couple of years and repenting at leisure.

I speak from experience, and don't mean to preach.

fimonkey

Brasso, (and others too who have mentioned 'investments' and 'making a killing' with the 30K) I'm curious .....

I've popped over to the savings and investments board and asked various questions about 'investments' etc, and keep getting the same answers back, that I should stick this 30K in a savings account seeing as I know nothing of the financial markets etc (and doubt I ever will, I'm numerically illiterate!).

However the best savings account (A&L) pays just 4.76% net. Given that the true price of inflation, the RPI (I don't know this for sure so please don't jump down my throat if I'm wrong, all info I've gained from this board) is currently 4.3%, I fail to see how this is 'Making a killing' or even making anything worthwhile at all!

So please can you back up your advice and tell me just exactly how I can beat HPI, and achieve the promised riches.. Otherwise I'll stick with my plan of a damn good holiday or three.

(see, I AM seriously considering all options so you guys Do have some influence... still looking forward to my jollies though)

brasso

I don't know the exact max at the moment but I think you can get around 6.5% in a high interest savings account these days. However, I would only be tempted to do that if I needed the money in the short term e.g. if it was for a house deposit that I knew I'd have to pay in a few months. In those circumstances I just couldn't risk a stock market crash say.

£30K can change your life but, and it's a big but, there's no risk-free way of doing that in the short term. Unless you're outrageously lucky, you're not going to turn £30K into enough to retire on in 5 or 10 years. But if you can discipline yourself to think longer term, say 20 years, you could be in a great position.

I've been investing with Hargreaves Lansdown (https://www.h-l.co.uk) for a while now. There are plenty of others but HL are stable and cheap in terms of fees. I've been a great believer in 'emerging markets' funds in recent years. You could quite easily have been earning 30%+ over the past 3 or 4 years. If you calculate how much the original sum would have become over 4 years if the earnings had been reinvested (£10K would have become around £30K)...

However, these are pretty volatile investments so I'm now becoming more cautious. I really like the High Yield Portfolio (HYP) strategy which is aimed at providing a good income, but is intended to be a longer term play (around 15-20 years is a nice period to build up a stonking return). The strategy usually involves investing in around 15 FTSE 100 companies, all of which tend to pay annual dividends of around 4.5% on average (which gets reinvested in the same shares). So that's almost guaranteed growth plus of course any capital increases in the basic value of the shares, which are likely to be considerable over a decade or two. There's no guarantee of course, but it's likely to succeed pretty handsomely. Read more about it here:

http://boards.fool.co.uk/Message.asp?mid=10554265

The Motley Fool boards are excellent.

Even if you'd had cash in a bog standard FTSE 100 tracker over 20 or 30 years, your investment would have massively grown, even including 2 or 3 serious crashes.

I appreciate that you may not be thinking in terms of long term investments but as I said, you'll have your work (and luck) cut out to 'make a killing' in the short term. Essentially, the higher the potential rewards, the higher the risk.

Of course you should have a great holiday, but do give some thought to making the money grow for you. Here's just a suggestion. How about something like this: Put the maximum £7K in a maxi ISA this year, and £7K in a high interest savings account until next April when you can put it in next year's ISA. With this year's £7K, choose 2 or 3 emerging market funds, or some other funds that could make you some cash in the short term (but may not of course!). Added to next year's £7K, you should have a nice pot to start building a HYP. If you can keep your hands off it (apart from occasional rebalancing) and reinvest the dividends each year, you should be producing a really decent income in 15 or 20 years time. And being an ISA, it's all entirely tax free.

This still leaves you £15K to have a splurge and give you a great start in saving for a deposit for when house prices start to drift downwards again.

But this is just a pipedream really. I don't know how old you are but it's likely that the thought of thinking long term will be anathema. It was to me when I was in my 20s and even much of my 30s. I had to get to 40+ to realise that I may actually have to retire at some point, and start to deal with building an investment strategy. It might all seem a bit boring but it's just the opposite. It can be really quite exciting and very intellectually challenging. That said, one of the things I like about the HYP (and of course there are other investment strategies) is that it believes in something called "strategic ignorance" ie it actually discourages learning too much about the markets. It's a "buy and hold" strategy, and because you invest in blue chip comapnies you can be pretty sure that your shares are not going to go up in smoke.

Anyway, I've said enough. Have your holiday but try very hard not to go nuts and buy a second hand Ferrari or something. The money you have isn't enough to solve all your short-term problems but (barring unforeseen disaster) it's certainly enough to solve your likely longer term problems.

You can always PM me if you want more info but do check out the HYP FAQ above, and perhaps go and have a chat with an IFA.

Oh, and enjoy your holiday.

---

Important Reminder: these are just my views, and there is no guarantee whatsoever that my musings will produce you a high reward.

wecanhelpu

Fim

People on that other forum generally fall into five categories :

They are either 1. looking for similar advice to you
or 2. people with "savings"
or 3. current stock market investors of varying experience
or 4. working in the financial industry
or 5. they are just being nosey (;)).

Obviously 1, 2 & 5 are useless when looking for advice about investments

More obviously, 4 are generally a bunch of lying thieves (although there are some good ones) and on a forum like this can't be trusted

3 on the other hand were once in the same position as you and number 1.

On a forum like this though they are reluctant to make reference to specific investment products/vehicles for fear of getting it wrong. And I am no different.

But I will say this - With 30k you could have five years of fantastic holidays and still have 20k left to invest in funds which should outperform housing as an investment over the next five years.

And as a novice investor you need to do some research. Try these two sites for starters

http://www.fool.co.uk/isas/index-tracker-isas.aspx

http://www.h-l.co.uk/


best wishes

brasso

fimonkey wrote: »

So please can you back up your advice and tell me just exactly how I can beat HPI, and achieve the promised riches..

I just belatedly read the thread you started on the Investment forum. FWIW, I don't really go along with the advice you've got there. I think you're less conservative than that.

I also don't like the idea of IFAs who charge commission rather than a fee as it's in their interest to recommend investments that benefit them as much as you. Who knows? Perhaps even more than you. I'm not suggesting they would do this deliberately but it has to be a subconscious factor in their thinking.

You can do your own research easily enough. There's a lot of stuff on the web. Try:

http://www.fool.co.uk/investments/investments.aspx
http://info.moneyweek.com/?jlnk=hsl0000
https://www.digitallook.com
http://citywire.co.uk/Funds/Home.aspx
https://www.fundsnetwork.co.uk

Also, it's well worth reading the Money/Business/Investment pages of hte broadshsheets on Saturdays and Sundays. Much of it is aimed at the newbie.

Above all, don't do anything hasty. It's the single best bit of advice I can give you.

Generali

If I was to go to someone for investment advice, I'd start with Warren Burret, personally.

He reckons a tracker first off. When you've got $100k then buy 1 share in Berkshire Hathaway, I guess.

brasso

Generali wrote: »

If I was to go to someone for investment advice, I'd start with Warren Burret, personally.

He reckons a tracker first off. When you've got $100k then buy 1 share in Berkshire Hathaway, I guess.

Warren Buffet (legendary US investor) is absolutely well worth reading. Of all the stuff I've read and heard about this business, the one single thing that sticks out most in my mind is something he said along the lines of "You have to understand the difference between investing and gambling", except he said it much more pithily. But the sentiment affected me a lot, and forced me to assess my own approach to my 'investments'. His implication was spot-on. I'd had a gambling mentality.

I think fimmonkey mentioning "making a killing" was telling. Again it's a day-trading/gambling mentality. I'm not being sanctimonious becasue I used to be the same. You see so much stuff about share "tips" that it's not surprising you develop a gambling attitude. But eventually you realise that as with conventional gambling, the average punter in the street doesn't win in the long term. It all comes down to patience. If you can convince yourself to be patient you can have it all. If you want it all now, you're likely to lose it all.

I didn't think Berkshire Hathaway (Buffet's own managed fund) was accepting new investment? I read recently that it had been closed to new investors for many years? I may have got that wrong.

Generali

brasso wrote: »

I didn't think Berkshire Hathaway (Buffet's own managed fund) was accepting new investment? I read recently that it had been closed to new investors for many years? I may have got that wrong.

You do have that wrong. Berkshire Hathaway is a quoted company not a fund - anyone with a brokerage account that will let them buy US stocks can buy in if they have either $3k for a B share or $100k for an A share.

Anyone with an internet connection can read Wozza's Words of Wisdom.

The way I see it, he recommends that you buy into really good income streams. He says that the correct length of time to hold an investment is forever. Price doesn't matter except that falls in price are a buying opportunity.

That makes getting suckered into BTL right now a mugs game IMHO - you're relying on capital gains. You only get them when you sell. Any 'increase' in value until the day you realise it is pure speculation.

Flog the BTL and buy shares in Tesco. Buy Berkshire Hathaway if you can afford it when there's a stock market crash.

brasso

Ah, OK. I've learnt something.

But I wouldn't buy Tesco, or any other retailer, at the moment. Banks, insurers, some utilities, and Glaxo all looking very cheap at the moment, but this is just a personal view, and not a recommendation.