I have inherited some shares. Sell or keep?

Tea-tart-and-rice_2

Hi, ive inherited 520 lloyds shares. I think they are worth just under £7 each. The probate solicitor wants to know if i want to sell or have them transferred to me. I know very little about shares. Wondering what you would do? Does anyone have any knowledge of lloyds shares and whether they may be worth hanging onto?

Thankyou.

cloud_dog

Tea-tart-and-rice wrote: »

Hi, ive inherited 520 lloyds shares. I think they are worth just under £7 each.

Unfortunately you've miss-priced the shares, they closed on Friday around the 70p mark.

Tea-tart-and-rice wrote: »

The probate solicitor wants to know if i want to sell or have them transferred to me. I know very little about shares. Wondering what you would do? Does anyone have any knowledge of lloyds shares and whether they may be worth hanging onto?

There are a large number of questions to ask to consider if you should hang on to them.

1. Do you own shares
2. Are you comfortable owning shares
3. Do you own any other financial sector investments
4. Are you desperate for the money
5. etc, etc

From a 'are they worth hanging on to....', again that's a difficult one but bearing in mind all the provisos above some people feel that now LLOY are out from under the Government blanket they should be able to a) try to grow the business as the BoD feel they need to, where they need to, and b) they pay a reasonable divi which could increase over time (depending on lots and lots of other variables).

Tea-tart-and-rice_2

Thank you for your reply. Ah, my sister and i were disagreeing about the value. She was adamant it was pounds not pence. Never mind.

Ive never owned any shares, and not desperate for the funds - was curious in wondering if anyone else had this dilemmma what would they be inclined to do.

jimjames

If you own no other shares then I'd get rid. You could always invest the proceeds in an index tracker in a S&S ISA but based on the total it won't get you too far

skid112

Roughly £350 worth. Lloyds have been heavily written about as a stock that could increase dividends given the Govt. exit. Currently yielding around 3.64% (4.36 with the latest special dividend). In my mind one to hold onto

jamei305

Look at this way - if you hadn't had this inheritance, would you have gone and bought £350 of Lloyds shares? I suspect not, in which case there's not much point in you acquiring some now rather than £350 cash.

BeachNut

If you don't need the cash now I'd keep them.

AndyT678

These questions are always really simple to answer IMO. If your inheritance came as £350 cash rather than shares would you use the cash to buy 520 shares in Lloyds? If yes, keep the shares, if no, sell the shares.

gingercordial

Have you been advised of what the fees would be to sell the shares? Depending on how much it is it might be an incentive to keep them if it is too high a percentage.

I have a handful of shares left over from a previous employer's bonus scheme - I left the company and most got sold automatically to pay the tax bill, so these were the few remaining. I wasn't given a choice as to whether or not to keep them, they were just handed over to me. I could of course now ask a broker to sell them if I wanted to.

At the moment they're worth about £1,000 and no, if someone asked me right now if I'd buy those shares again with £1,000 from my savings I wouldn't choose to, but there are fees for selling them which put me off and I don't need access to the money at the moment. I'm therefore happy to keep receiving the dividend twice a year and bide my time to see if they ever get taken over; a couple of years ago there was a bid for the company at a very good price which would have taken them off my hands for no fee, but that fell through. I expect there'll be another bid one day.

If I had been given a choice at the time I probably would have taken the money but probably would have spent it on something pointless as that was long before I really took control of my finances... As it stands at today's price they are worth 2.2x the value on the day the rest were disposed of, so not a bad choice to have forced on me.

I do think everyone else's advice is sound of course!

steampowered

It doesn't seem worth the effort of holding onto £350 worth of shares.

I would sell them and combine the money with the rest of my assets in my Stocks & Shares ISA.

tea=tart=and=rice

Thank you everyone for the constructive advice.

More important than the dilemma of keep/sell is the fact that it has uncovered the solicitor's incorrect valuation - his letter to my sister advised that they were worth £6.98 each and each holding was worth in excess of £3,900!!!!

Only discussing it together ahd my asking the question on here has it now become apparent that his valiation is way out!

I asked him to clarify via email and he agrees 'we' are right!

Havent got much confidence in him now regardless of share value...

On the matter in question i think i may hang onto them - for a rainy day.