Santander Investment Hub

eskbanker

Kath_Daniel wrote: »

Hello
Need help please. Is the Santander Investment hub worth joining? I have used my £1000 per year Tax allowance and want to know what to do with the few thousand I have and how to save more. Any advise would be welcomed. Thanks - I'm a novice

You're potentially conflating two separate issues here, i.e. should you invest outside of saving, and if so, where?

In terms of the first, once you've built up suitable cash reserves for the foreseeable future and have plenty of funds that you won't need for many years, then investing is potentially an option.

However, as pointed out in earlier posts in this thread, Santander's product is unlikely to be the best choice in terms of value for money.

If you are interested in finding out about investing, I'd usually recommend starting your research at sites suited to inexperienced investors, such as:

https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/investing-beginners-guide
https://www.hl.co.uk/beginners-guides/investing
http://www.monevator.com
http://kroijer.com/
http://diyinvestoruk.blogspot.com/
https://www.ifa.com/indexfundsthemovie/

as well as bearing in mind a number of key points of principle:

1. Only consider investing once you have adequate accessible cash reserves.
2. Only invest if you're happy to commit for at least 5-7 years and preferably 10-15 or more.
3. Diversify - ignore individual shares, etc, and concentrate on collective investments that spread your eggs over many baskets. Global multi-asset funds are a good place to start, available from the likes of HSBC Global Strategy, Vanguard LifeStrategy, Blackrock Consensus and L&G Multi-Index.
4. Choose what you want to invest in before considering which platform to hold it/them on.
5. Keep an eye on ongoing costs for funds and platforms - they shouldn't be the primary consideration but can make a noticeable difference over the long term.
6. Use a Stocks & Shares ISA as a tax-efficient wrapper to avoid liability for income and capital gains tax.