stocks and shares isa

bigadaj

Simple funds which you can leave and forget would push you towards a vanguard lifestrategy fund, probably the 60 or 80% share versions.

These spread risk over worldwide shares and bonds and also rebalance, ie if one element performs well then they put the proportion back into alignment which many people consider good as it is considered that many investment elements revert to a mean over time.

For smaller sums in these then Hargreaves can bee xpensive because of the fixed fee monthly charge, have a look at bestinvest and charles stanley direct as potential options.

In terms of risk then the all share should be slightly less risky than the 100 because it is slightly more diversified, though checking on trustnet it shows the all share more risky strangely, 94 for the ftse 100 and 97 for the all share. On this scale cash would be 1. Vanguard ls 60% is rated 55 on this scale with the 80% share version rated 76 on the same risk scale.

gadgetmind

bigadaj wrote: »

have a look at bestinvest

Not a good option for a small investment in a Vanguard tracker due to £60pa fee for an ISA holding these trackers.

dreaming

I have been trying this thread with interest as I have been looking at a S+S ISA which can just be "left". Basically I have just been made redundant and taken early retirement so have taken pension which covers my normal outgoings (have no mortgage). Some cash will need to be readily accessible in case of emergencies I thought the cash ISA (£11k including last year's and this year's allowance)could cover this, and I would probably keep up to a thousand in my Nationwide e-saver account. I cannot go for the higher Nationwide Flex accounts (have basic Flex to which my pension will be paid) as not enough cash each month, so have just opened up a Santander 123 account as can move the direct debits from Flex account to fulfil that part and set up monthly transfer of the £500 required to cover d/d's. I have about 23k of which I was planning to put 16k into the 123 account and open up a S+S ISA with the max.5760 for this year. This is meant to be money I "tuck away" for the future so understand that it is a long term investment. Then next year I would subscribe to another cash ISA (hoping rates increase)but still having easy access to cash should I need it (also have 6k on 0% credit card which needs to be paid off by April 2014).
However I have failed to follow the discussion on S+S ISAs as people are talking about costs of transfers etc. and how the different companies price these and other fees. If I literally want to invest a 1-off amount this year, and then have to do minimal thinking about it (as I think smudger1964 wants to do) are transfer fees something I have to worry about too much, or do I just have to pay an annual (or semi/quarterly/monthly) fee?

bigadaj

gadgetmind wrote: »

Not a good option for a small investment in a Vanguard tracker due to £60pa fee for an ISA holding these trackers.

Sorry brain freeze, meant to say cavendish.

Yorkie1

dreaming wrote: »

However I have failed to follow the discussion on S+S ISAs as people are talking about costs of transfers etc. and how the different companies price these and other fees. If I literally want to invest a 1-off amount this year, and then have to do minimal thinking about it (as I think smudger1964 wants to do) are transfer fees something I have to worry about too much, or do I just have to pay an annual (or semi/quarterly/monthly) fee?

Have a look at this link here, which was useful to me when I started out a few months ago:
http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

The way I understand it for myself is that there are two sets of charges relating to shares which I buy: a) those relating to the shares / fund etc, and b) those relating to the company which I buy / hold them through.

a) should be the same irrespective of which company. It used to be called TER or AMC as an abbreviation.

b) varies according to the company.

Charles Stanley Direct, which I use for b), charges a % of what I buy (or something like that, I think). Whereas HL charges £2 p.m. irrespective of size of holding.

So if I held £1000-worth of shares for a year, I would pay HL £24 for that i.e. 2.4%. Whereas for that level of investment, the % charged by CSD is less than 2.4%.

I seem to recall that a few months ago, it was cheaper to hold my Vanguard shares with CSD until they reached about £9K, at which point the £2 pm charge from HL worked out a better %.

You can perform similar calculations with the other platforms / brokers.

One think to bear in mind is that if you want to go with platform #1 and plan to transfer to #2 at a later date, you may face a charge by #1 to transfer your funds. This will need to be factored into the calculation of whether or when it's worth transferring, or into the initial calculation of who you use initially at all.

I'm a complete novice, so if I've got anything much wrong, I'm sure the others will correct me though!

jimjames

Yorkie1 wrote: »

Have a look at this link here, which was useful to me when I started out a few months ago:
http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

The way I understand it for myself is that there are two sets of charges relating to shares which I buy: a) those relating to the shares / fund etc, and b) those relating to the company which I buy / hold them through.

a) should be the same irrespective of which company. It used to be called TER or AMC as an abbreviation.

b) varies according to the company.

Charles Stanley Direct, which I use for b), charges a % of what I buy (or something like that, I think). Whereas HL charges £2 p.m. irrespective of size of holding.

So if I held £1000-worth of shares for a year, I would pay HL £24 for that i.e. 2.4%. Whereas for that level of investment, the % charged by CSD is less than 2.4%.

Although a) is the same regardless of where the fund is held it effectively does vary as some platforms rebate some or all of their part of this fee. So a 1.5% AMC may be 1.5% at some fund supermarkets but as low as 1% at another.

Cavendish are one of the cheapest and rebate all their portion of the AMC whereas HL rebate part which could be 0.25% so in this example their effective AMC would be 1.25%.

I don't believe Cavendish sell Vanguard funds though so you'd be limited to the ones they do sell with that route.

bigadaj

If you work out what funds you fancy then compare fund platforms shows the cost at different brokers. You'd need to do a couple of iterations as what may be best initially might change as you save more but it's a useful tool. As gadget mind notes it's good to check the exit fees also.