Starting a S&S ISA: Vanguard LS. Platform?

macgyver

grey_gym_sock wrote: »

not quite. iweb will also charge £5 each time you buy or sell. so with a lump sum added once a year, that's £5 per year. still very good value, though.

Thank you. I have taken the dip and opened the account with I Web, awaiting their confirmation. Planning to buy VLS 100% for £11520.
We will see how it goes before my wife applies for an account. I know time is short before this year will end in 1st week of April.

doctorcat

grey_gym_sock wrote: »

halifax, or iweb, can be cheaper for bigger investments, or less frequent dealing. charles stanley are cheaper for the smallest investments, or more frequent dealing.

suppose you currently have £10k invested in 1 lifestrategy fund.

charles stanley would be charging you 0.25% p.a., which is £25 per year. with no further charge for dealing, either monthly or as a 1-off.

halifax would instead charge you a fixed £12.50 per year, plus any dealing charges. e.g. if you add a lump sum once a year (for you whole ISA allowance), that costs £11.95, so the total annual cost is £24.45.

or if you invest monthly with halifax, that costs £1.50 per month, so £18 per year, making the total cost £30.50.

those figures (£25 vs £24.95 vs £30.50) are pretty similar. the point is mainly that, if you have a lot less than £10k invested, charles stanley are cheaper, but if you have a lot more, halifax are cheaper.

and iweb are similar to halifax. no annual charge. all dealing costs £5 (no cheaper monthly dealing). but £25 to open your first account with them.

for starting with £100 per month, charles stanley makes more sense.

for starting with the whole ISA allowance (£11.5k) as a lump sum, and perhaps doing the same next year, halifax or iweb makes more sense.

Hi,

I'm thinking of investing up to £1000 in a Vanguard LS 60 fund via a SS ISA, and then possibly making smallish (~£50) monthly contributions through the year.

Reading the above, would Charles Stanley be a good choice? As far as I can see from their site, the fee would be £20 a year. However, they also say that there's no fee if 6 chargeable trades are made in 6 months. So...there would be no fee at all?

Thanks,

DC

Freecall

dunstonh wrote: »

How are you going to react when your fund value drops 40%?

Personally, I always cry.




....... but what the hell, my investments have generally picked up in the past.

:beer:

silvermum

Two tips from me...

Look up Lang Cat Financial and find the tables in their blog which show the relative costs of all the different platforms (for a set of assumptions similar to the profile of an 'average investor' (if such a thing existed!)

Download the free kindle book 'Monkey with a Pin' from Amazon.. it may change how you analyse your investment strategy!

shoegal30

Hi MacGyver I hope you don't mind me jumping in on your post.

I am also looking at opening a S&S ISA before April and have an initial lump sum of £10k. However, I have no investment experience and am looking for an option whereby it is managed by a broker - passive investment.


I have been reading through your shortlisted brokers and was wondering if this is going down the passive investment or self-select route?

macgyver

I have opened up an account with iweb. Planing to transfer £11545 into my account (11520 for isa and £25 for the iweb fee) once I have mobilised the money from my savings account.
I am going to buy Vanguard life strategy 100% fund only and leave the money there for long term and keep adding my isa allowance each year as a lump sum. I could have decided to do a monthly investment as well and in that case I would have gone to Halifax. As I understand it is passive investment as it is fund of funds based on the trackers which had done well over the last two years but I do understand that that it will drop in value but I am prepped for that and am willing to wait until 10 to 20 years by which time I hope it would have shown good growth.

grey_gym_sock

the brokers mentioned are execution-only, meaning they don't give advice on what to invest in, so you have to take your own investment decisions. however, if you use something like vanguard lifestrategy, it is a very hands-off investment - you need to take the initial decision, but it's something that doesn't require constant monitoring.

so self-select or managed is 1 decision, and active or passive is a different decision.

shoegal30

ok grey - so I think I am veering towards managed and passive - would that be correct?


even if I went down this route - would I have to initially pick which funds I wanted to invest in?


does anybody know if vanguard do stock/shares and cash isa as opposed to bonds?

Archi_Bald

shoegal30 wrote: »

ok grey - so I think I am veering towards managed and passive - would that be correct?

no, not really. You can have either or both, managed and passive funds, in an S&S ISA. The "managed" refers to the fund manager, not to the fact that you have the investment with a discount broker.

Did you read the monevator article I gave you the link for previously? You may have to read it a few times before you you understand it, but don't be afraid, it is not really difficult.

shoegal30 wrote: »

even if I went down this route - would I have to initially pick which funds I wanted to invest in?

Yes, absolutely. Again, it's all in the monevator article that I linked to before. As it says in there, the Vanguard LS funds are the easiest for novices.

shoegal30 wrote: »

does anybody know if vanguard do stock/shares and cash isa as opposed to bonds?

no they don't do either, and you wouldn't want your ISA with a fund manager, anyway, since their charges would be prohibitive. You must look to minimise your charges, and therefore go to one of the discount brokers. Again, monevator has a great summary of all the brokers. An even better "selector" is the superb spreadsheet provided by snowman, a link to which you can find at the bottom of this post.

xylophone

First put that £10000 somewhere where it will earn you some interest.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/saving/article-1583859/Best-savings-rates-General-savings-Internet-branch.html

Read http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/ISA-guide-savings-without-tax

Then do some research

Smarter Investing by Tim Hale and The Long and the Short of it: Finance and investment for normally intelligent people who are not in the industry" (2009) by John Kay.

are books that have been recommended by other posters.

Read the links in post 4 https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/64837484#Comment_64837484

After that, you can start thinking about how and where you want to invest?


For example, you could look at buying your Vanguard funds through Charles Stanley Direct ?


https://www.charles-stanley-direct.co.uk/Products_And_Serviceshttps://www.charles-stanley-direct.co.uk/Products_And_Services