Invest in gold or something else ?

Clare43

DigForVictory wrote: »

The depends on age thing is massive to me. If I had £8K to place, right now, I'd be investing it in education - increasing the market value of myself & offspring.
Were I retired & just wondering how to prolong that £8K, I'd have other problems (although loosing it from my estate to a buried ice cream tub for the offspring to recover in later years has a certain appeal, it isn't that legal & MSE is.)

I'm 44 today I have no children so don't need to worry about education

ColdIron

Clare43 wrote: »

Thank you. I might be being a bit daft but can you explain how the allowances you mentioned work please. I'm pretty new to investing so don't really understand everything.

ISAs shield you from most tax but the taxman isn't daft and places a limit on how much you can put into them in any single financial year, otherwise we'd all put all our money in them and he'd never raise any tax from us. In 2016/17 you can put £15,240 in and 2017/18 it goes up to £20,000. Once in an ISA you can forget about tax and record keeping

Anything not held in an ISA is liable for tax as mentioned above

For dividends you can earn up to £5,000 without paying tax this year but anything over that and you need to pay tax at 7.5% as a basic rate taxpayer or 32.5% at higher rate. This is your responsibility, L&G won't do it for you and you need to keep records in case HMRC challenge you

Similarly there is an allowance for Capital Gains (the difference between what you paid for the funds, possibly years ago, and the value of them when you sell them). You can make a gain of up to £11,100 this year without being liable for tax. Anything over that will attract CGT at 10% at basic rate and 20% if you are a higher rate tax payer and again you need to keep records of all those purchases and sales

Paying tax that HMRC doesn't require you to pay is daft but all that record keeping and working out your tax can be a pain in the bum, in an ISA you can forget all about it. Are you beginning to see the attraction of ISAs yet?

The funds are all held with L&G as far as I'm aware. So if I found someone with cheaper fees I can move the unit trusts I have with L&G to them then if I wanted ?

Basically yes. I don't know if all your funds held with L&G are L&G funds themselves (though your first looks like L&G Global Healthcare & Pharmaceutical) but most platforms will carry many of their products, although you should check

Clare43

ColdIron wrote: »

ISAs shield you from most tax but the taxman isn't daft and places a limit on how much you can put into them in any single financial year, otherwise we'd all put all our money in them and he'd never raise any tax from us. In 2016/17 you can put £15,240 in and 2017/18 it goes up to £20,000. Once in an ISA you can forget about tax and record keeping

Anything not held in an ISA is liable for tax as mentioned above

For dividends you can earn up to £5,000 without paying tax this year but anything over that and you need to pay tax at 7.5% as a basic rate taxpayer or 32.5% at higher rate. This is your responsibility, L&G won't do it for you and you need to keep records in case HMRC challenge you

Similarly there is an allowance for Capital Gains (the difference between what you paid for the funds, possibly years ago, and the value of them when you sell them). You can make a gain of up to £11,100 this year without being liable for tax. Anything over that will attract CGT at 10% at basic rate and 20% if you are a higher rate tax payer and again you need to keep records of all those purchases and sales

Paying tax that HMRC doesn't require you to pay is daft but all that record keeping and working out your tax can be a pain in the bum, in an ISA you can forget all about it. Are you beginning to see the attraction of ISAs yet?

Basically yes. I don't know if all your funds held with L&G are L&G funds themselves (though your first looks like L&G Global Healthcare & Pharmaceutical) but most platforms will carry many of their products, although you should check

Thank you With the amount I've got invested with L&G at the moment I don't think I'm going to be above the £5000 dividend limit and need to pay tax at the minute but I do plan to invest more so this will probably change. I will look into their ISA details.

bigadaj

Carrieanne wrote: »

An ounce of gold was £173 on this day in the year 2000. Today that same ounce is £964.

The drones who are too stupid to understand that the fiat money they worship has no intrinsic value whatsoever and is on its deathbed will suffer the most when the controlled demolition of the current monetary system is triggered because they have no physical gold as insurance. They prefer to remain ignorant so as to pursue relative peanuts through money lending activities.

OP - Buy some gold coins (1 oz Britannias would be my pick), hide them well, and just as importantly tell no-one you have them.

Interesting this post hasn't been challenged, what's the average return over the last thirty years say, it's not great is it. Just as likely to lose value as gain it.

ColdIron

I was ignoring it. The dates are carefully cherry picked and it ignores the relative strengths and weakness of sterling on those dates. Consider the outcome if you had bought late in 2011. I don't think we can rely on another Brown Bottom just before we buy and a Brexit just before we want to sell our gold

Have a play with this in GBP
https://www.bullionbypost.co.uk/gold-price/10-year-gold-price-chart/

p00hsticks

bigadaj wrote: »

Interesting this post hasn't been challenged, what's the average return over the last thirty years say, it's not great is it. Just as likely to lose value as gain it.

This graph shows the price over the last 100 years in dollars
http://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-year-chart

key highs and lows are;

June 1920 $238.32
April 1934 $635.36
Aug 1970 $226.34
May 1974 $809.54
Aug 1976 $461.73
Jan 1980 $2,103.74
Apr 2001 $355.66
Aug 2011 $1,945.45
Jan 2016 $1,135.88

So pick your timespan to suit your particular point of view - go back 15 years to show a healthy rise, or 5 to show a mega-slump.....

bigadaj

Yes that's my point, I was concerned it appear credible to inexperienced investors, particularly as it received some thanks and wasn't critiqued.

DiggerUK

Clare43 wrote: »

I'm 44 today

And I hope you had some surprises, and something planned.

It's a goodly age to start, bulk of ours went in from when we turned '50ish'
Just make sure it's a bit of what you fancy, and understand what your getting in to.

As an aside, if you had started buying when it hit it's highest price in September 2011, and continued by regularly purchasing on a monthly basis, you would be up on the deal. All that shows is that 'averaging in' over time can work.
This site gives price history, scroll down..._
http://goldprice.org

jimjames

bigadaj wrote: »

Interesting this post hasn't been challenged, what's the average return over the last thirty years say, it's not great is it. Just as likely to lose value as gain it.

Especially when you compare it against something like Woodford over that time. How much has that increased in 30 years, £10k to £250k? Is gold really that good?

DiggerUK

p00hsticks wrote: »

.......
June 1920 $238.32
April 1934 $635.36
Aug 1970 $226.34
May 1974 $809.54
Aug 1976 $461.73
Jan 1980 $2,103.74
Apr 2001 $355.66
Aug 2011 $1,945.45
Jan 2016 $1,135.88

So pick your timespan to suit your particular point of view - go back 15 years to show a healthy rise, or 5 to show a mega-slump.....

You really need to double check your sources before posting...

http://www.maguireref.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/GoldPricesChart.pdf