Stocks & Shares ISAs

PeteinSQ

Good advice. We've got that in the offset account.

I think the main question I'm trying to ask is - should I be focusing on paying the mortgage off/having it fully offset. Or looking for growth elsewhere.

In the past we had a much bigger mortgage and my sole focus was on getting as much of it paid off as quickly as possible. We were then able to pay off 2/3 of the mortgage in one go due to moving from one expensive part of the country to a cheaper part. So I wonder if I should stick with my original attitude and approach or change it?

colsten

In theory, I would invest if I can be certain that I get a better return than my mortgage interest rate. In practice, this is difficult to ascertain and I wouldn't go by opinions from strangers on the internet.

jimjames

PeteinSQ wrote: »

I think the main question I'm trying to ask is - should I be focusing on paying the mortgage off/having it fully offset. Or looking for growth elsewhere.

Personally I am no longer overpaying my mortgage as I think it's likely to be a far better return from investing instead. It really depends on rates but as my mortgage is at 2.29% I can't see the point in overpayment when I should easily be able to beat that from investments.

SanGeronimo

Sorry, wondering if someone who's used a stocks & shares ISA can help out - I know this is a complete newb's question, just can't find the answer anywhere.

I've chosen a platform and went to research a few funds and familiarise myself with all of the practical mechanics of how to transfer funds but all I get is a stock symbol. As a complete noob I wasn't sure if this means I'd be investing in 'the fund' or something else relating to the fund/company. An example is that I was looking at Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust but only seem to get a stock quote for SMT - is that the correct thing to buy to be in 'the fund'?

Sorry, I know this is really basic. All my searches around 'how to buy funds' just turn up platform and strategy articles... so a bit more high level than I'm looking for here :-)

Thanks!

Vortigern

SanGeronimo wrote: »

An example is that I was looking at Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust but only seem to get a stock quote for SMT - is that the correct thing to buy to be in 'the fund'?

Scottish Mortgage is an Investment Trust, which you could buy in your S&S ISA. SMT is the symbol (or shorthand/abbreviation) for Scottish Mortgage and can be used to look up details of the investment trust on various websites.

Is it the correct thing to buy? I can't answer that for you. I've been drip feeding cash into SMT for the last 4 years and it's done quite well, but past performance is no guide to the future.

How to buy investments? - You pay cash into your chosen platform, then place an order to buy your chosen fund/share/IT, using that cash.

Which platform have you chosen?

SanGeronimo

Hi Vortigern,

Thanks very much, I've bought shares before so recognised the stock symbol but wasn't sure that was the actual fund and not just shares of the parent company (or something entirely different) given many of the others seem to have a different format of code. For example another one I looked at is 'Fidelity UK Small Companies' and there seems to be a W account (GMUG) and a Y account (MPR3), these code formats are different, and the references to W and Y accounts further confused me.

I'm familiarising myself with iWeb platform as I want to be completely clear on what I'm doing before trading, though the platform seems a bit basic and the interface is not very intuitive.

Thanks again!

Archi_Bald

SanGeronimo wrote: »

I've bought shares before so recognised the stock symbol but wasn't sure that was the actual fund

Not all funds work the same way
http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/news/62085/fund-abcs-types-of-funds.aspx

SanGeronimo

Thanks alot Archi!

That covers a few points I hadn't seen elsewhere...

:j

Deco

This guide appears to be out of date wrt Halifax. They appear to charge £2 per monthly stock purchase so unless you don't intend on setting up a monthly direct debit the fees are £36.50 a year not £12.50. Unless there's a way round this charge?

masonic

Deco wrote: »

This guide appears to be out of date wrt Halifax. They appear to charge £2 per monthly stock purchase so unless you don't intend on setting up a monthly direct debit the fees are £36.50 a year not £12.50. Unless there's a way round this charge?

The £2 per month is a trading fee and applies per fund/stock that you buy each month. It is not part of the admin fee.

If you regularly invested into 10 funds per month, you'd pay £252.50. If you don't make any trades in the year, all you pay is £12.50.

You can also place trades ad hoc at a cost of £12.50. If you placed ten of those in a year instead of the regular investments, you'd pay £137.50.