Stocks & Shares ISAs

bluepowell

Alexland wrote: »

Firstly if you are a higher rate taxpayer can you pay enough into your pension to get your income down to basic rate?

Those investments are big enough that a fixed price ISA wrapper such as iWeb should work out cheaper than Vanguard Investor or Cavendish percentage charges.

I would consider a single mixed asset fund such as Vanguard LifeStrategy, HSBC Global Strategy or Blackrock Consensus.

The existing S&S ISA can be ISA transferred and you could contribute up to £20k per tax year to wrap the others and your ongoing rental income.

Alex

Hi.

Thanks for the advice. As per usual after getting a bee in my bonnet about sorting this all out I lost momentum due to life getting in the way.

Anyway.

I just wanted to check I’m fully understand your advice.

1. As canvendish use a % for fees, if I had 39k with them, I’d be charged more than iweb, as the £5 per deal fee (probably 12 monthly DD’s = £60 fee) would work out at better than a % of the value of my holdling.
2. I plan to transfer the JPM S&S ISA to one of the ones suggested, vanguard/hsbc, or blackrock , but I am correct in thinking that your advise would be to sell the none S&S ISA Fidelity investment over a period of time and put that into the vanguard/hsbc, or blackrock, rather than buy back the fid one but within a ISA?
3. As for the pension situation. I am not contributing at the moment. You mention about making pension contributions that would bring me below the high tax level. Would this be better than investing in a S&S ISA? I am correct in my understanding that if my earnings are 55k and I put 11k into a personal pension then when it comes to my self assessment my personal tax bill would be based on the 44K? i.e. only pay tax at the standard rate. And on top of this the 11k I pay into the pension would really be worth over 15k due to pension tax relief of 40% that the government adds.

Thanks again.

Alexland

I am not authorised to give 'advice' so just some discussion, pointers on things to consider and then you make your own choices.

1. Yes once the account balances get big enough it is cheaper to move away from percentage fee platforms into fixed fee (or capped fee) platforms. If you plan to place 1 trade per month consider Halifax Share Dealing who are £12.50 pa +£2 per scheduled regular trade so for 12 trades a year that would be £36.50.

2. Generally it's good to get your investments ISA wrapped using your various allowances each year. There is no particular reason to buy what you currently hold - the important thing is you have something suitable going forwards.

3. Pension contributions are critical to most people's financial plans. The tax relief will depend on if you are in a Net Pay or Relief At Source arrangement see below link.

https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/tax-relief-and-your-workplace-pension

Alex

Matteo024

hi everyone, i have posted on this forum before about my situation and got great replies that have forwarded me to this question,
I need some advice regarding the best fund to choose for my personal situation, I am 20 years old I already own a help to buy ISA account and have maxed out my companies pension, and have a basic cash ISA with my bank where i keep the bulk of my money. I recently got into investing and have really been liking the look of the Vanguard Life strategy funds, this is something I am planning for more than 5 years, I like the look of the 40 and 60 % equity funds as my attitude to risk is ok. I have 30k to invest in cash, I need to know really if the Vanguard life strategy funds are appropriate for my situation, i am willing to ride out the bumps and am just hoping for a steady long term growth and to re invest all profits for compounding, with a good enough fund i would be willing to invest for a longer period of time, If anyone has any suggestions on some other funds i should look at according to my situation that would be great, or tell me if i should just stick with vanguard life strategy. Also another question is whether it is a good idea to possibly split my money into multiple funds or if it is better to just stick with one

eskbanker

Vanguard's LifeStrategy range are a sensible option for a newbie investor and certainly a much better idea than your initial plan of self-selecting a few individual companies.

However, they're far from the only show in town and there are also similar global multi-asset products from other players, such as HSBC Global Strategy, L&G Multi-Index and Blackrock Consensus.

Note that I'm not suggesting you hold one or more of these in addition to VLS - research them until you're happy that you've found the one that fits your requirements best and buy into that one. It's potentially worth diversifying into other funds later on but generally for a sub-£50K portfolio, a single multi-asset fund should suffice.

bluepowell

Alexland wrote: »

I am not authorised to give 'advice' so just some discussion, pointers on things to consider and then you make your own choices.

1. Yes once the account balances get big enough it is cheaper to move away from percentage fee platforms into fixed fee (or capped fee) platforms. If you plan to place 1 trade per month consider Halifax Share Dealing who are £12.50 pa +£2 per scheduled regular trade so for 12 trades a year that would be £36.50.

2. Generally it's good to get your investments ISA wrapped using your various allowances each year. There is no particular reason to buy what you currently hold - the important thing is you have something suitable going forwards.

3. Pension contributions are critical to most people's financial plans. The tax relief will depend on if you are in a Net Pay or Relief At Source arrangement see below link.

https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/tax-relief-and-your-workplace-pension

Alex

Thanks for the further pointers.

After more reading and research and taking on board what you have said i think i now know what my plan is.

I'm going to transfer my current S&S ISA (15k value) that is with JP Morgan to another platform and also reinvest this into something more suitable as it isn't performing very well.

My Fid investment (none ISA). This is worth 22k (2K initial investment many moons ago). Going to sell this and re-invest in the ISA wrapper over a couple of years (to avoid CGT.)

Then once i have got that wrapped up i'm going to do the same thing with my shares that i hold (unilever, BT, BP and Santander total value approx 45k combined). These shares currently have the divs re-invested and i am getting closer to the 2k per year div tax free limit, so need to do this to avoid tax bill in the future. I plan to carry this div reinvestment on once they are inside the ISA wrapper. (i'm assuming i can do this?). This would mean about 15 Div re-investments transactions per year.

I also plan to invest £50 a month into a fund within the isa

The other thing i'm going to do is open SIPP as being self employed for the last 5 years i haven't paid into a pension. Had a final salary pension prior to being self employed. I plan to invest 1.5k a month into this (assuming that my current income carries on as it isf or now)

With all that in mind I wondered what would be the best platform for my S&S ISA? Previous poster suggested Halifax due to lower fees. Trouble is trying to compare different platforms doesn't seem that straight forward!

Any pointers would be greatly received.

Reed_Richards

mehfoos wrote: »

I wanted to bring attention to ..........

This type of post comes across as much more unbiased and altruistic if you are regular contributor to this forum. As a first-time contributor it's hard not to suspect that you many have some vested interest in the company you are recommending.

sabretoothtigger

Robots are posting links in a similar way to spam emails, most times its obvious but would be better if even a new poster can hold a conversation, justify their post

syncuser11

Hello

Currently I have 3 savings "pots", 1 ISA with Halifax, a savings account with Marcus and a Nationwide savings account.

Neither of those 3 pay decent interest, it's more my want to put money aside that is keeping them active.

I've been looking at various options such as the new modern mobile based investment apps (such as Moneybox), the more established sites (such as Nutmeg) and also the traditional investment options (such as Hargreaves Lansdown).

I'm looking to invest anywhere between £250-500 per month and I'd like to get fairly aggressive with my investment strategy.

Based on experience, can anyone give me some feedback on what they've used in the past and what might be suitable for me?

Thanks

Alexland

syncuser11 wrote: »

Based on experience, can anyone give me some feedback on what they've used in the past and what might be suitable for me?

Other than you currently have some cash and are considering S&S investments we don't really know enough about you to make any useful suggestions. S&S is for money you will not need for the medium (5+ years, preferably 7+ years) to long term (15+ years) to reduce the chance of you withdrawing less than you contributed or could have achieved from cash savings. Most platforms either have an app or can be accessed via a mobile web browser so this shouldn't be a primary consideration.

It might be worth starting a new thread in the main Savings & Investments forum giving a bit more detail in particular your age, current cash savings, future contribution rate and objectives e.g. buying a house, planning retirement, etc and when they might happen?

Alex

manorhouse

I read a post on this site yesterday which spoke very well of free trade.
The free trade bit i did not like as they seem to bunch all trades together at close.
But it appears you can pay just £1 for an instant trade .
No platform charge .
It is fca registered so have 85k of safe cover .
Good to have competition if we all took it up might force the likes of HL to review prices .