Quickie Question on How to buy Fund

nellis10

I've been looking on the Charles Stnaly Direct FAQs but can't find the answer.

I have a new DD in place starting April 3rd for £100/month into VLS80.

I put £100 into account on opening in Feb for March 10th buying into fund.

I now have an extra £100 to put into the account.

If my monthly investment with VLS80 is £100, will the extra £100 just sit there or will it invest the additional £100 into my fund?

OR do I have to have the minimum of £500 in my balance to do a one off buy of the fund outside of the monthly investment?

Thanks folks, I'm being daft I know, but it's my first time ever investing.

chockydavid1983

I'm not familiar with CSD but with Cavendish Online I had monthly payments going in to VLS100 and could then invest additional lump sums and choose what they were invested in.

cloud_dog

nellis10 wrote: »

If my monthly investment with VLS80 is £100, will the extra £100 just sit there or will it invest the additional £100 into my fund?

OR do I have to have the minimum of £500 in my balance to do a one off buy of the fund outside of the monthly investment?

Unfortunately I'm not with CSD either but....

I have an account with Halifax and HL where I use monthly payment / investing.

HL treat the payment as the investment amount, i.e. the total of the payment must equal the total of the investment amount (across one or more investments)

Halifax treat the two actions (payment / investment) separately so I can set up a payment amount of £200 but only invest £100 (or I could do £300 investment as long as there is sufficient cash in the account already to cover the difference).

I would take an educated guess and say that if you have 'manually' added £100 in to your account then it will sit there as there aren't any instructions to invest it.

Are you able to alter the investment amount (for one month) and leave the payment/Direct Debit amount alone?

ColdIron

CSD work in the way cloud_dog describes for Halifax and not like HL, the two components are separate. The DD just deposits cash into your account and monthly investments are taken from your account. You can stop the DD and still invest monthly or vice versa

Irritatingly with CSD if you want to change the DD they post a new mandate to you to sign and return

nellis10

Thanks guys, it's as I expected.
I'm going to see if I can bump the monthly investment up to £200 for the first month and then back down to £100 from April...

Thank you all!

ColdIron

Unless you like signing and posting Direct Debit mandates I'd add the extra £100 with your debit card

nellis10

ColdIron wrote: »

Unless you like signing and posting Direct Debit mandates I'd add the extra £100 with your debit card

Yep, at the moment I'm not ready to up the DD to £200 so will adjust accordingly with debit card.
When I'm ready I'll split my investment into VLS80 and one other, yet to be researched.

Lokolo

ColdIron wrote: »

Irritatingly with CSD if you want to change the DD they post a new mandate to you to sign and return

Not correct. Almost though!

You can change the DD amount by secure message, however, if you decide to reduce it to £0 they will cancel the DD and therefore if you wish to then start again you have to fill in a new form.

For example this is me in the past (dates and amounts not real )

£50 a month - May 2016
Upp'd to £250 a month - June 2016 by secure message
Down to £0 a month - August 2016 by secure message
Upp'd to £250 a month - November 2016 by new mandate form
Upp'd to £300 a month - January 2017 by secure message

edinburgher

What Lokolo said, a quick secure message gets the job done if it's just a change from a positive amount to another positive amount.

nellis10

Lokolo wrote: »

Not correct. Almost though!

You can change the DD amount by secure message, however, if you decide to reduce it to £0 they will cancel the DD and therefore if you wish to then start again you have to fill in a new form.

For example this is me in the past (dates and amounts not real )

£50 a month - May 2016
Upp'd to £250 a month - June 2016 by secure message
Down to £0 a month - August 2016 by secure message
Upp'd to £250 a month - November 2016 by new mandate form
Upp'd to £300 a month - January 2017 by secure message

Thanks Lokolo, that makes sense and when I read my secure message it did indeed say I could change my DD via their message system.

I guess the only issue now is how easy is it to change the funding per month based on your balance.

Eg
Currently 100 balance.
10th March - 100% to VLS80
3rd April first DD comes out
10th April - 100% to VLS80

But I had budgeted 100 for DD for March, which doesn't actually get taken now till April. I was going to add the 100 for March via debit card, but wondered if it would be added to the existing 100 balance and on 10th March they would buy me 200 f the fund and not just 100.

My monthly investment is set to 100/month into VLS80 so I suspect it wouldn't take the extra 100.

And lump sums are minimum 500, which means I would have to keep upping it to 500 until I could do a one off buy into the fund in addition to the 100/month

I hope that all made sense! :o:o:o

edinburgher

There's another option - wait until your first monthly £100 has been invested and then you're free to top up with any amount from £100 (it doesn't have to be £500 minimum if you already have investments in the fund, even if these are less than £500).