Project Mortgage Neutral Begins

ElmoR

Interesting to hear your feedback on the new OU course AJM.

You asked if anyone had any recommended books on investments. I quite liked Smarter Investing by Tim Hale.

I also found an article series on the tinternet called Monevator and there were some pieces by a writer called the Accumulator. I found those good too because they give examples of different scenarios. Mostly, I still feel a bit in the dark with it all though.

ElmoR x

ajmoney

ElmoR said:

Interesting to hear your feedback on the new OU course AJM.

The MSE one or the other one I am doing?  I quite enjoyed the MSE one, I didn't know before it how tax and NI is actually calculated so I do now.  Other than that I had learned a lot of it either on here or through my own experimenting with finances over the years.

I have 2 sections left to do on this other one.  For the first time ever I have calculated all my assets and liabilities and now know my net worth.  I also have some other figures that I will probably forget what they mean but are healthy. 

Lomcevak

I'm a fan of Monevator too - generally the articles have a focus on keeping things simple, and they have a sample portfolio that gets reviewed quarterly that i've found very useful. There's constructive debate in the comments too, which generally stays good-natured (anything too political gets stamped on pretty quickly). Some of the debate gets very technical, there are a few real experts there, but it's mostly fairly approachable.

Smarter Investing is good, another option is Investing Demystified by Lars Kroijer - another fan of keeping it simple. My SIPP and S&S ISA are based on his approach.

As for budgets / SOAs, not sure if you're a YNAB user or not, but that was the real breakthrough for me, i've never found anything else as good. I've been a user since 2010, and it really turned my finances around. I have a few frustrations with the latest web-based version, but wouldn't be without it.

Lomcevak

By the way, one thing to be aware of with both Hale's and Kroijer's books is that they both take a a fairly bond-heavy approach - that was well-motivated when the books were written, but needs some thought in current times. E.g. Kroijer assumes a (small) positive real return on short-duration gilts - i.e. they'll just about outperform inflation - but even medium-duration gilts have a negative real return right now. So, outside a heavily-deflationary scenario (unlikely, although I assume possible) there's little upside to gilts, and long-duration gilts will suffer hugely in an inflationary recession.

So gilts are unlikely to behave as the 'traditional' counterweight to equities that the books assume, and although I like Kroijer's book, I'm more heavily skewed to equities than he seems to prefer. Time will tell if i'm right!

(I noticed in the March crash that both my equity and bond holdings fell in parallel for a while, rather than bonds rising as equities fell - investors sold anything liquid and moved to cash. That corrected a bit after a while, but even then bonds nowhere near made up for the fall in equities as the classic model would suggest)

ajmoney

Lomcevak - that just blurs my mind and is why I want to take some time to read and understand properly, especially as I have always been keen in training as a financial advisor.  I find it is really hard to search for the correct information about courses that are recommended or routes into the profession, especially as ideally I would like to go in at a graduate level.  I have a couple of friends I am going to approach that may be able to shed some light on this for me.

I will look at the sites when I can clear my mind from these OU courses.  I am about to head out for a walk as I have spent far too much time working on this today, I also don't have anything in for dinner for so I need to go shopping.

Lomcevak

There's a lot to take in, but there's nothing too terrible - it just needs time to think through it. The only thing to be aware of is that our strange times with very low interest rates have changed some of the classic 'rules' a bit, so books can go out of date quickly. Nobody knows quite what the new 'rules' are, as you'll see from debate on sites like Movevator. We're all stumbling around trying to figure things out, which makes it a bit harder as you'll see a fair few contradictory views

I did my MBA at the OU so very fond of the place, nice to see they're doing courses with MSE. 

slowlyfading

Suffolk_lass said:

Why not check out The Frugal Cottage that is the blog site of @simplyfading? - she runs the "save £12k in 2020" thread (has done for years). This year she has started running simple videos and courses via her Youtube channel and her FB page (links are all on her web-site).

Thanks for sharing my blog and YT channel  

Suffolk_lass

slowlyfading said:

Suffolk_lass said:

Why not check out The Frugal Cottage that is the blog site of @simplyfading? - she runs the "save £12k in 2020" thread (has done for years). This year she has started running simple videos and courses via her Youtube channel and her FB page (links are all on her web-site).

Thanks for sharing my blog and YT channel  

You are welcome - I think ajmoney would benefit from reading your stuff which is really good for entry level investment understanding and your videos are really clear to better understand the way you have approached investing and getting a handle on the jargon (equities, funds, dividends, accumulation, bonds, shares, trackers, managed, ETFs! - it is all a bit confusing to start with)

ajmoney

Just logged on to $ky to look at changing my sports subscription, their website says not to call them with queries and deal with everything online but when I click on manage the reply is "can't manage $ky sports right now, call our experts'!!!  I guess it might be because I have paused the subscription but I want to sort this out before they unpause my subscription start charging me for channels I won't be watching on the 19th.

ajmoney

It looks like the separate channels will end up being the same price or more expensive so I will stick with what I have, it is a shame the only channels I have it for won't be showing live sport yet.  I

I have just finished the other OU course, I am not entirely sure which direction to take next. I have been in touch with a couple of friends who work in the financial sector and they are going to get back to me with qualifications that are required and entry requirements so as much as I want to get on with something else I am going to pause for a bit.  Next up is to look at the websites that have been suggested over the last couple of days and update my SOA.