Investing £50 per month - Student

SomebodyiUsedtoKnow

Hi MSE users

I'm a sponsored student and earn around £600 Per month, I save £100 of this plus whatever I have left over from the previous month. However I would now like to start investing an additional £50 per month.
Access wont be required for a long time (over 5 years)

I just have a few questions for you all....
1) How should I go about investing a small amount (£50) each month?
2) are there any limitations as a student?
3) what type of investing should I do with a small amount? (funds, shares ETC)
4) which platform should I use? (H&L, TD Direct ETC)

Please please please, do include anything else you think will be relevant!

Thanks!

masonic

Assuming you have a few months living expenses saved up in an emergency fund, then it might make sense to start investing if you think it is likely you won't need this money for considerably longer than 5 years.

Because of the small monthly sums involved, you would not be able to invest efficiently into shares, ETFs or investment trusts because of trading charges, so holding funds (OEICs) through a platform that does not charge any fund trading fees (e.g. Charles Stanley Direct) would be the most cost-effective option.

You will be quite limited in the number of funds you can invest in with that amount of money, so a broad multi-asset / global fund, either passive, such as Vanguard Lifestrategy or L&G Multi Index, or actively managed equivalents would make the most sense. Monthly investments plans can be set up for as little as £25 per fund per month, so this should not be a problem.

mvarrier

You could also consider P2P.

With ratesetter you could loan out £50/month at at least 6%/year in the current market and the platform is very well established with a good provision fund.

After the next stockmarket crash inevitably happens you could switch over.