DIY Pension or use Advisor

dunstonh

I suppose I would be so scared of losing my money.

You will lose money. it is inevitable. Investments WILL go down as well as up. The economic cycle will see good years, bad years and nothing years. You have to average them out. You cant avoid the negative years.

I would say two of the biggest mistakes new investors make are:
1 - investing above their risk profile/capacity for loss
2 - fashion investing. i.e. investing in something that is fashionable in the media or websites/discussion boards and losing structures to their investments because of it.

Sobryma

Jonah01 wrote: »

Does anyone have some good links or references as a starter for understanding the basics.

Contradictory as I now use advised/managed solutions
but try these, you can apply ideas to active/passive/blend:

Fundology - John Chatfield-Roberts
All about Asset Allocation - Rick Ferri (US)
Smarter Investing - Tim Hale
Investing Demystified - Lars Kroijer
Asset Allocation : Balancing ... - Roger Gibson (US)

Websites - look at:

Trustnet
Citywire
Hargeaves Lansdown
Bestinvest
Monevator

Bestinvest run asset allocation models on their website - alternatively look t APCIMS which includes benchmark portfolios for private investors.

atush

kidmugsy wrote: »

John Kay's The Long and the Short of it: Finance and investment for normally intelligent people who are not in the industry (2009).

As for losing money: you will from time to time. What you mustn't do is panic, sell up, and thereby crystallise your losses. You have to stick around for a recovery. You also have to accept that you can find yourself in a long bear market.

"The initial investment would be 15k followed by monthly payments." Consider putting the initial lump into some cautious investments, and put the monthly money into something more volatile. Then don't check how it's doing except annually. More frequent checking leads to fretting and fidgeting, with their emotional and financial costs, respectively.

I agree. And also remember when being afraid of 'losing your money' you will get tax relief (and in some cases employers contributions) and therefor markets would have to crash hugely for you to lose any of your own cash you put in.

So basically, never panic sell.

gadgetmind

Sobryma wrote: »

Fundology - John Chatfield-Roberts

That's by far the most utterly useless book on investing that I have ever read!

kidmugsy

gadgetmind wrote: »

That's by far the most utterly useless book on investing that I have ever read!

But it's got an "ology".

Sobryma

Its difficult to find anything much on selecting active funds i.e. at least without a built in passive bias, its about the only one I found. Not read it but the The Investor Paradox might be worth a lend.

BirdyBoy_2

I have accumulated five pensions over many years, four personal; in each case an advisor has taken a commission and creamed off each year. Expensive advice on funds amounted to selecting 'Balanced Managed' and NO review of fund choice has ever been initiated by any advisor even though they received performance data each year direct.
I am reading this forum as I am thinking of shifting it all into a SIPP and I will be review fund performance and take control through to retirement and draw down.
Looking back I also suspect that some advice about moving vendors was simply based on the levels of reward and commission and nothing to do with my long term wealth at all. My view now to reduce as much as possible the people trying to live off my wages and to go for low charge simple wrappers.

dunstonh

Until January 2013, trail commission wasnt for ongoing servicing. Although a number of advisers would use it for that purpose.