How to invest £40 a month?

Maddy25

Better_Call_Saul wrote: »

A place to start could be First Direct. Switch bank account to them get £100 for switching then take advantage of there regular savings account for year 1 at 6%. Interest rates will have gone up by then and the savings scene might look a bit different. You will need the willpower not to take it out though.

It says on there website, for the £100 I need a monthly salary of £1000!

planteria

that sounds about right. perhaps look at the Regular Saver thread, and consider a regular saver with one of the Building Societies.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/608697

Better_Call_Saul

Maddy25 wrote: »

It says on there website, for the £100 I need a monthly salary of £1000!

Sorry Maddy, I wasn't aware of that condition.

ColdIron

Maddy25 wrote: »

It says on there website, for the £100 I need a monthly salary of £1000!

For the First Direct Regular saver at 6% you need a current account with them as well. This needs £1,000 a month which does not have to be salary but if you just open an ordinary savings account with them as well and put £1 in it, the monthly payment is waived. Just open this as well as your Barclays account, you only get the £100 if you switch accounts

jimjames

Maddy25 wrote: »

So are these investment plans, like the Scottish one, 10 years long or do I have to somehow close them myself after 10 years?

Unlike the plan you mentioned initially they do not have a fixed life so can be closed when you want or need the money.

However that does mean they are far more flexible and cost effective than the type of friendly society plan that your friends seem to have had.

I seriously doubt that they made £20k from £40 per month though

sparkychris

Maddy- i will get rubbished for saying this because the axa sunlife (Or something similar) savings plan is considered the worst thing you can do in the whole wide world ever, if you read these boards- but it worked for me....

i started one many moons ago and read somewhere that if you stopped paying or cancelled it, you lost all your money in 'fees' etc, which is a great incentive to keep paying in! Like you, i was absolutely awful with money- i was up to my neck in debt and any savings vanished as soon as i saw something shiny in a shop window!

So i kept paying in so i wouldnt lose my money and cashed it in after about eleven years for about 12 grand- but that was the top one which started at £50 a month, which raised by 10 per cent a year until it got to £100 a month.

i just looked at the payments as another monthly bill which needed paying.

Worked for me!

********ducks********

Smithy101

You are indeed correct Maddy25 it is SIT or Scottish Investment Trust.
For historical reasons a lot of investment trusts are Scottish, something to do with the days of the British empire.

I cannot post links because I'm a newbie but I'm going to have a go but put a gap in the link before the .com bit, I don't know if it will work.

Now, why I think this interesting is it has a graph depicting the performance of SIT compared to RPI, which is true inflation (unlike CPI). It's pretty startling.

whichinvestmenttrust .com/invest-sit-back-and-let-it-grow-scottish-investment-trust/

Maddy25 this is not a high risk investment trust or even the top performer but if you are someone who doesn't want to take too much risk then this but want decent performance then this may be the thing for you.

The costs are so low if you use their share plan.

Archi_Bald

Why are you suggesting the SIT if it has performed way lower than the average fund/trust/index?

The larger principle outlined in that article is of course correct - many investments have historically outperformed cash savings.

Smithy101

Archi_Bald wrote: »

Why are you suggesting the SIT if it has performed way lower than the average fund/trust/index?

The larger principle outlined in that article is of course correct - many investments have historically outperformed cash savings.

The reason I'm suggesting it is because Maddy25 stated in her initial post that she wants something that is risk free. There is of course no such thing but there are investments with a lower risk profile over time, and she does have a long term horizon remember.

SIT takes less risk than the market which but still beats the performance of cash deposit accounts very well (in technical terms it has a low Beta and Sharp ratio).

planteria

as discussed elsewhere, i am investing in Friendly Societies on similar terms. 10 year minimum, guaranteed not to lose capital.