Only freedom will do

edinburgher

@Alex - too much time spent cooking leaves Mrs E literally holding the baby. As she does this for four days a week as a minimum, I can appreciate her frustration. I haven't found a way to reconcile her need for time out and our need to eat healthy meals yet...

@Hollyboll - haha - now he has the voice of the car from Knight Rider in my head :rotfl:

Goldiegirl

edinburgher wrote: »

Goldie, that's very much the case, but there are limitations to how small the amounts that you can invest can be. A typical minimum for a lump sum into a fund that you don't already hold is £500, with top ups of £100 minimum. So you might like to hold cash until ready to move.

An easyish way around this is to set up a regular payment for one month (regular payments normally have a £50/mth minimum) and then you are free to make £100+ payments from the point that your first monthly payment is taken.

I recommend Ch@rles Stanley Direct for small fund only portfolios (£25k or less, that sort of thing).

Thank you Ed, that's great.


Charles Stanley was one of the providers that I've been looking at, and they are on my shortlist.


Lots more research to do yet, as I also need to decide what to invest in, although the Vanguard Life Strategy range looks interesting.


Also, need to gather some money together as well!

edinburgher

Goldie, am I right in thinking that you have FS pensions? If so, the security of this means that your investing profile will probably look quite different from someone drawing down from a pension pot.

Goldiegirl

edinburgher wrote: »

Goldie, am I right in thinking that you have FS pensions? If so, the security of this means that your investing profile will probably look quite different from someone drawing down from a pension pot.

Yes, I have a FS pension, which I started drawing when I was made redundant a few years ago. As part of the redundancy package, those of us who took the pensions got a favourable deal. Mr Goldie currently takes income from a personal pension, which he started drawing when he was 60, otherwise he'd have lost the Guaranteed Annuity Rate.


Mr Goldie gets his state pension next year, which also includes some SERPS, so it'll be more than the new flat rate pension.


He also has other pension pots which total around £135K. We don't need to draw on these yet, and I don't want to rush to do anything with them just yet, especially as one of the pensions currently has an annual growth rate of 8%, which is pretty good.


But, at some point in the future, we'll want to draw down these funds. But they are old products and don't allow for drawdowns


Our ultimate goal is to put them in a SIPP, and drawdown as required


That's why I want to get into investing, to prepare myself for managing a larger portfolio. Plus, we have most of our savings in cash, which is not very savvy


So, we have some security, and I'm looking to the medium term. Therefore, I feel we don't have to be totally low risk, but, at this stage in the game, I wouldn't want to be high risk either


I'm not keen on the idea of an IFA, when I know I can do this sort of thing for myself


The Vanguard Life Strategy looked interesting as it seems to be Global and a mix of bonds and equities.


Any thoughts or pointers you might have would be gratefully received!

edinburgher

I'd say that you have a complicated set of circumstances, but it seems that everybody does these days! Gone are the people who worked for one company for 40 years and then got a single monthly payment 'til they popped their clogs

One of the biggest challenges of retirement planning seems to be our ability to visualise the various pots as parts of a system, I'm confident that you're more than up to the task.

I enjoyed the articles on Monevator called 'Creating a secure retirement income'. In them, he starts from a position of knowing yourself/your budget, ascertaining what guaranteed income you have (and when it kicks in) and considering how best to manage what's left after you have the 'guaranteed' floor to ensure you have a little fun along the way.

For my own purposes, I have a spreadsheet that shows the different timelines (hopeful ER drawing down ISA/P2P/cash monies/personal pension)/government pension/state pension/death ) I use the FV function in Excel, conservative estimates and information on my natural yield (i.e. what my investments are actually doing) to suggest what I'll have at what age and to backtest withdrawal rates.

One thing I think a lot about would be your investing timeline. You've mentioned 5 years, which is pretty short term in the grand scheme of things. If I were you, I wouldn't be looking at anything racier than VLS60 (if you want to use Vanguard).

edinburgher

We are getting our first quote for solar PV on Friday - wave of the future! :j

Goldiegirl

Thanks Ed, that is very helpful.


I'm probably being conservative about 5 years, but as Mr G is 9 years older than me, I tend to think about someone in their mid 60's, rather than their mid 50's (Me!)


But the VLS60 was the one the one that initially caught my eye.


I'll certainly be having a good look round at platforms and funds, before I make any decisions. Plus looking at Monevator


But thanks for your comments, it's much appreciated

edinburgher

One thing to consider is finding a middle ground between your age (might need a bit more risk if you're younger) and your investing timeline (i.e. I'll not have a job in 5 years and might need some money then). You can try to achieve this by blending less risky funds with slightly less of riskier funds, holding a cash buffer etc. etc.

In addition, adopt a PDCA approach, if it doesn't work change it

As MSE forumites will appreciate, there's seldom any problem so intractable that you can't fix it eventually through planning and considering your options.

hiddenshadow

edinburgher wrote: »

We are getting our first quote for solar PV on Friday - wave of the future! :j

Nice! Shop around a bit, we got quotes ranging about 2k in price (for the same size system) and haggled £500 off the price of the installer we went with in the end.

Luckyinlife

Just had a few payments early this month for some of the loans i took out :] on FC

Least my money is working harder for me in there