Investment Advice. Time to change focus?

Trumpeter

I am now (hopefully) within the magic five years before retirement.

As a bit of background, I've been investing in S&S ISA's on & off for several years, self selecting the funds using a low cost broker & held on the CoFunds platform.

More by luck than judgement, I've built up a portfolio that's currently worth about £75K but I couldn't tell you how much I've initially put in (although I'm sure it's much less than this!!) or how much I'm paying for having it looked after. Reading this back, I realise that I must sound like a right twonk but it's just the way it's gone over the years.

There's currently a lot of medium & high risk funds & because it hasn't mattered too much (within reason) I've been happy with this profile. However, as retirement approaches I think it's about time to start taking it more seriously.

I've read a couple of the threads regarding Vanguard Lifestrategy Funds & people mostly seem to be very happy with the idea behind them.

What I would like to know is what is the cheapest way of transferring into the Vanguard products & would it be better to wait until after April to decide as I believe that all providers charging stuctures will be changing.

My current low cost broker does not offer Vanguard as one of it's providers so it would mean changing brokers but I do not know who would be best for my purposes. In addition to moving the £75K "lump" I would also be looking at restarting monthly savings into the fund if that makes any difference to the overall cost.

Thanks for any help/advice.

bigadaj

Comparefundplatforms.com is a useful tool, plug your funds in there and it comes back with typical costs under various scenarios.

I'm in the processing of moving my legacy funds to cavendish online. They are pretty cheap and I've been impressed with their responses to emails and the like process is long winded as I'm on cofunds like yourself but they use funds network, so in specie transfers are long winded.

I've recently used charles stanley direct for this years isa into vanguard but not lifestrategy and they seem fine and cheap. Currently only have 12k with them and they aren't the cheapest above 20k apparently but it's not all about cost.

Also remember that recently conventional risk is being partially turned on its head, many people are worried about holding gilts due to potential capital losses when interest rates rise, I'm still mainly equities as whilst they look fairly priced currently Almost all alternatives look overpriced.

pip895

What's magic about 5 years - I can see the point if you are looking to convert to an annuity but presumably you are not looking to do that with your ISA? Unless you think you will be cashing them in, (eg to pay off a mortgage) I personally wouldn't rush to change a wining investment strategy.
May also be good to let the dust settle re changing platform charges etc. anyway.

kidmugsy

If what you mean is that you'd like to move from your high risk funds to, say, an income portfolio, then you could always consider the Investment Trust income portfolios discussed by "Luniversal" on The Motley Fool forums. He calls them his Basket "of Seven" (B7) and "of eight" (B8). As for bonds, over the years we've preferred to hold them directly rather than through funds or ETFs. You can buy any gilt in an ISA as long as its remaining life is more than five years, and then hold it to maturity if you want. We've also held Convertible Bonds, with the same constraint.

http://boards.fool.co.uk/basket-of-seven-annual-review-2013-12828989.aspx

http://boards.fool.co.uk/basket-of-eight-annual-review-2013-12888164.aspx?sort=whole