Need a nudge to take the plunge

Chris75

I don't know your wifes dads age or health but it sounds like you should also be considering Inheritance Tax. Remember gifts within 7 years of death are added back to the estate for Inheritance Tax Purposes. 20 Flats and an expensive house would be interesting!

noggin1980

Chris75 wrote: »

I don't know your wifes dads age or health but it sounds like you should also be considering Inheritance Tax. Remember gifts within 7 years of death are added back to the estate for Inheritance Tax Purposes. 20 Flats and an expensive house would be interesting!

Thanks yeah he is 70 and got Cancer a couple of years ago (which he got through fine fortunatly) but that encouraged him to look into inheritance tax, I know hired an accountant in the last month or so to find out the best course of action. He gave us and my sister in law £14k each for Christmas and said we should expect more gifts.

I don't know what the mortgage situation is on those flats or house though other than that he is not mortgage free but yes there would be a very large inheritance tax bill if he died today. Hopefully he will live another 15 years or so and he will be able to give a large percentage away to my wife and Sister before then.

He gave us 80k to help buy our house when we got married though he also tried to talk my wife out of marrying me on our wedding day, so pros and cons This was over 10 years ago so no worries there with tax.

But my health has gone downhill alot over the last year which has really encouraged me to make sure everything is set up well for Andrea, I can't do much so I do what I can.

Gram_Parsons

@Noggin1980
Not sure if you've already seen it, but your latest portfolio is very similar (a good thing IMO) to the "slow and steady portfolio" on Monevator. Even more so if you add the property tracker as suggested above by The Tracker. I've got a very similar draft portfolio I plan to go live with in the very near future in a SIPP. Started a S&S ISA last week but just went with a Vanguard LS80 for now.

The slow and steady portfolio on Monevator has grown 7.6% year on year for the last four so fingers crossed! No guarantee that it will continue like that of course. Best of luck to you (and me).

noggin1980

ok signed up with Charles Stanley, doesn't seem like I can buy funds today as I have to wait for a code to be posted out to use my debit card, it says you can pay with a bank transfer (anyone know if that is normally instant? if it takes days I may as well wait for the code)

I selected my funds and placed them in my basket and it says.

Each fund has a minimum investment of £500.00. Your smallest fund investment comprises 10% of your basket. Accordingly, that 10% must represent at minimum £500.00 of spend. Your basket as a whole therefore represents a minimum investment of £5000.00.

does this mean the min I can have in each fund is £500, or the min I can place in is £500? ie does this mean I couldn't deposit £500 each month split between the 6 funds? or does it just mean I have to start with 5k?

noggin1980

Gram_Parsons wrote: »

@Noggin1980
Not sure if you've already seen it, but your latest portfolio is very similar (a good thing IMO) to the "slow and steady portfolio" on Monevator. Even more so if you add the property tracker as suggested above by The Tracker. I've got a very similar draft portfolio I plan to go live with in the very near future in a SIPP. Started a S&S ISA last week but just went with a Vanguard LS80 for now.

The slow and steady portfolio on Monevator has grown 7.6% year on year for the last four so fingers crossed! No guarantee that it will continue like that of course. Best of luck to you (and me).

Thanks that article was one my influences when making my choices

enthusiasticsaver

noggin1980 wrote: »

Thanks everyone, I had read quite a few threads and had searched for ones similar to my own before posting and saw quite how many became a debate after a few posts scaring off the original poster, thats why I spelt out so strongly that I'd for better or worse made my decision to go passive. So while I appreciate your opinion Ryan I'd prefer to avoid taking the discussion in that direction.

I think I'm going to set myself a deadline of a few days and try and chose a fund mix and if after that few days I don't feel it's better than the lifestrategy fund I'll go with that. That way by setting a deadline I'll avoid never doing anything (which is what I've been doing for months)

I do want a decent chunk of America despite the warnings but the lifestrategy fund is more America centric than my preference. As long as I pick similar cost funds is the only downside to having multiple funds instead of the 1 that I'd have to rebalance myself? When moving away from a percentage cost platform in a few years would I then have to pay say 5 fee payments per monthly deposit instead of one?

I understand where you are coming form as I procrastinated for years before taking the plunge with stocks and shares - I was too old (55), too inexperienced, the market was too high etc etc but I think in the end you just have to start slowly and gain experience so I am at present investing £1000 per month in the VLS 60 via Cavendish online, so the same line you are considering.


I chose this for the simplicity factor as I do not want to rebalance every time I buy a different fund and I also think that as my portfolio gets bigger it will be cheaper fees wise if moving to a flat fee platform if there is a smaller number of different funds in it. I could be wrong on that though but at the moment I am on a steep learning curve and need to educate myself before plunging into fund picking.


However saying that I have a large cash isa maturing with £36k in May and will not be putting it all into the Vanguard but splitting it between the Vanguard LS 60 and the Legal and General Multi index (as that has some property holding) and one of the Blackrock consensus multi asset funds (£12k in each). I like the multi asset funds.

bowlhead99

noggin1980 wrote: »

ok signed up with Charles Stanley, doesn't seem like I can buy funds today as I have to wait for a code to be posted out to use my debit card, it says you can pay with a bank transfer (anyone know if that is normally instant? if it takes days I may as well wait for the code)

Bank transfer will not be instant as they will need to wait until your cash credits their bank account, verify it's from you, manually update your account etc. Also even if you pay by 'faster payments' that's not a guaranteed sameday service from your bank, even if it often appears to go through in minutes.

I selected my funds and placed them in my basket and it says.

Each fund has a minimum investment of £500.00. Your smallest fund investment comprises 10% of your basket. Accordingly, that 10% must represent at minimum £500.00 of spend. Your basket as a whole therefore represents a minimum investment of £5000.00.

does this mean the min I can have in each fund is £500, or the min I can place in is £500? ie does this mean I couldn't deposit £500 each month split between the 6 funds? or does it just mean I have to start with 5k?

All the funds have £500 minimums for a one off first investment of new money coming in via lump sum, it's not worth their while registering you as an investor in a fund below a certain level. So working backwards from the smallest holding, they worked out you would need at least £5k to be able to deploy it in that ratio and meet the minimum on the smallest one.

But yes on an ongoing basis when you are committing to contribute monthly they will take small top-ups and £50 each fund would be fine. Usually they publish the minimums somewhere (minimum one-off, vs minimum regular monthly, being two separate numbers) and it may differ from fund to fund.

You would probably find that if you didn't do any initial purchase, just committed to fund monthly purchases by direct debit, you could start off with £50 rather than £500 in a fund and keep it going. Different platforms deal with that in different ways.

noggin1980

Thanks very much, very helpful :-)

AlanP_2

noggin1980 wrote: »

Thanks, did you see my post earlier about how we own half of 2 flats and my wifes Dad has 20 flats and an expensive house (half of which will be my wifes inheritance, though I think his plan is to sell them one at a time and gift cash) so Andreas inheritance will be affected by the property market. Does this not mean I should avoid a property tracker?

Not necessarily, in fact it might be a positive enhancement to your overall portfolio )making an allowance for the residential properties as part of a large investment pot) as a property fund will be investing in commercial property.

So it diversifies away from residential property and rents / prices will not follow the housing market.

On the other hand a significant number of the property funds actually invest in commercial property company shares as opposed to "bricks and mortar" somewhere.

Given that you may well have some exposure to such companies via your other funds and the property fund may well move broadly in line with stock markets.



On a general note you seem to be going in the right general direction and are learning as you go (as I am being a newbie to this as well).

guymo

bowlhead99 wrote: »

You would probably find that if you didn't do any initial purchase, just committed to fund monthly purchases by direct debit, you could start off with £50 rather than £500 in a fund and keep it going.

That is the case with Charles Stanley Direct, with a small wrinkle.

For small purchases of Vanguard funds (< 1 unit at a time) they can't be set up via the web interface and you need to contact customer services to have the monthly purchase instruction put in place. At least, that was the case previously.