IFA charges and recommendations- thoughts please.

bostonerimus

If you want to invest in stocks and bonds you must be prepared for losses and well as gains and know how to react through both the lows and the highs of the market. So I would educate yourself and save yourself some serious money by DIY Once you have the basics then you might start with a low cost multi-asset fund; L&G, Blackrock, Vanguard etc all have these types of funds. I'm biased towards Vanguard as I've used them for 30 years in the US and I like their structure and approach to investing so you might want to click around

http://www,vanguard.co.uk

Audaxer

If you are so fearful of making a mistake, which I can understand as it's a big decision, a passive global multi asset fund like Vanguard LifeStrategy or L&G Multi Index might be the way to go, as they are low cost, globally diversified, regularly rebalanced and you can choose your equity/bond risk level. In my view that would be better than going to an IFA for the amount you are investing.

You could invest £20k into an ISA each year so it is not going all in at once in the event of an imminent crash - the remainder could go into high interest current accounts until next year's ISA allowance is available in April.

You could have the equivalent of a VLS50 by putting half into a VLS40 and half into a VLS60.

If for instance you invested through Halifax Share Dealing it only costs £12.50 annual platform fee and £12.50 for each trade - if only one investment a year that's very cheap.