Any experience of 'Moola' robo-investment?

TBC15

thenewcomer wrote: »

HSBC has been trying to offer me to meet up with their financial advisor for years for free. ive not taken it up.

Always worth a sit down with a nice cup of coffee. When the man in the suite tells you what he could have done with your money last year, show him what you did. Could be a reality check either way.

Shedman

cfw1994 wrote: »

Holy Thread resurrection, Batman!

Just curious how folk are going with their Moola investments?
I (perhaps foolishly!) went adventurous (heck, in for a penny...), & thus far, the 100pcm has swallowed 1100 of my cash....with a value of 1088....could be worse

For me, the main draw was the bonus:


Any update on WHEN they will pay that in?!

The wife and I went for this as well but both went for Conservative option. I dumped my £1200 in one lump (well strictly it was £200 followed by £1000), the wife's was £200 followed by £100 a month over 10 months so we both now have contributed the full £1200 required. Mine is showing around £1195 and hers is actually in profit at £1203 woohoo. Assuming they do pay out the £125 each (and we had email confirming we're eligible) then pretty happy with that.

We have stopped Wife's DD now as well by the way. We're both in general investment accounts not ISAs so obviously the timing of the bonus doesn't impact so much but hopefully they will do as promised and pay out the bonus before end of current tax year. Might be worth somebody who went for the ISA version giving them a nudge and double checking.

Don't think we'll be able to repeat last years bumper referral / cashback / bonus / switches offers this year as we seem to have already done most of the ones that are still around. Oh well reckon we've had over £2500 from them so far in this tax year so can't complain.

Alexland

Coo we just received Moola Market Commentary emails saying "We are pleased to let you know that your £125 cashback for signing up to Moola through Money Saving Expert will be credited to your account on or before 26th April. More details to follow in an email next week". It's only a GIA so I don't care which tax year they add it into the account.

Shedman

Cheers Alex. I'd just sent the email to trash without reading it. That's good news although I thought LHZ had spoken to them in April last year (post #33) and they said were going to pay out in the current tax year, although like you ours are in a GIA so not an issue for us.

Need some more cashback / referral deals in new tax year ...fingers crossed.

Alexland

Moola emailed the 500 of us who signed up via the MSE April 2018 offer offering a further £30 per friend (up to £150) who signs up for monthly contributions into a S&S ISA or GIA which start at £50. Each referred friend then gets £50 each added after 12 months. However it would mean keeping one of our accounts going for a further year. We are not going to bother but someone might want to start a thread in the Referrals board.

Alex

granta

Thanks Alex for keeping us all updated!

Do you think we can withdraw the amount invested now or is it better to wait until we receive cashback end of April?

Shedman

Alexland wrote: »

Moola emailed the 500 of us who signed up via the MSE April 2018 offer offering a further £30 per friend (up to £150) who signs up for monthly contributions into a S&S ISA or GIA which start at £50. Each referred friend then gets £50 each added after 12 months. However it would mean keeping one of our accounts going for a further year. We are not going to bother but someone might want to start a thread in the Referrals board.

Alex

Got the same email..they must have seen my post about needing some more referral deals :rotfl: Might have bothered with it if the retention period for the referrer was say only 3 months, but, like you, don't want to have to keep the account(s) open for the next 12 months so no go here as well.

Alexland

granta wrote: »

Do you think we can withdraw the amount invested now or is it better to wait until we receive cashback end of April?

We are playing it safe and waiting until both 12 months after our initial investment trade and the bonus has been added into the account before initiating the withdrawal. Hopefully our balanced investments will still be circa £30 up so a total of £155 profit each.

Shedman wrote: »

Got the same email..they must have seen my post about needing some more referral deals :rotfl: Might have bothered with it if the retention period for the referrer was say only 3 months, but, like you, don't want to have to keep the account(s) open for the next 12 months so no go here as well.

The problem is that by keeping the account and continuing to invest even at a reduced rate of £50 per month the extra fees you would pay compared to Vanguard would use up some of the first referral bonus. It would only be attractive if you were confident of finding 3-5 people to sign-up.

Anyway they left it too late to make the offer and we had already decided to add the money into our HL LISAs for the next tax year.

Alex

granta

Alexland wrote: »

We are playing it safe and waiting until both 12 months after our initial investment trade and the bonus has been added into the account before initiating the withdrawal. Hopefully our balanced investments will still be circa £30 up so a total of £155 profit each.


Thanks. I was leaning towards playing it safe too! Was just thinking by withdrawing now I might capitalise on the slight recent gain!! But overall not a bad profit for trying out a new robo-advisor.

Alexland

granta wrote: »

Was just thinking by withdrawing now I might capitalise on the slight recent gain!! But overall not a bad profit for trying out a new robo-advisor.

Now showing as £45 return which I would be very happy with for a balanced risk investment. Similar to our experience with Moneyfarm a few years ago there isn't a way of adjusting the risk profile to get more certainty of that return. Still I have read of others on Nutmeg using this feature to buy high (when confident) and sell low (when nervous after a drop) so maybe it's a good thing that less experienced investors don't fiddle too much.

I always say don't invest for less than 5 years but then keep making small 1 year investments to collect these bonuses. The money gets continually recycled into other investment accounts so even if I sold at a loss then it would pickup the eventual recovery on another platform.

Similar to Shedman I am on the lookout for new bonus opportunities as these will be our last GIA accounts closing next month. In particular I am on the lookout for a S&S JISA bonus as we had another child born last week just a bit too late to take advantage of the recent Welathify JISA offer. Also looking for any upto £1k IFISA bonus opportunities having already taken Kuflink, Ratesetter and Zopa bonuses.

Alex