Vanguard LifeStrategy

clsmooth48

Alexland wrote: »

I am guessing they are seeking to achieve 70/30 which seems reasonable to me.

This was exactly my thinking before investing in both funds although I suspect I may have overcomplicated matters for myself somewhat for no real reason

dunstonh wrote: »

No indication that any thought has been made to the investments. Just how little that can be paid and it has to be Vanguard. Although we only have a paragraph to go on

You're completely right, I gave very little information! Although I mentioned Vanguard I'd be happy to invest in other funds through Charles Stanley Direct which may compliment the LS funds which appear to be quite UK focused. Ideally I'd like to keep costs down and would be looking at 15-20 years of investment. Any suggestions to research would be appreciated!

bowlhead99

clsmooth48 wrote: »

Although I mentioned Vanguard I'd be happy to invest in other funds through Charles Stanley Direct which may compliment the LS funds which appear to be quite UK focused.

You mentioned you may have already overcomplicated it for no real reason. The last thing you need to start doing is looking for further funds to 'complement' the ones you already have and build up a whole portfolio of funds that are all basically trying to achieve the same thing but you're trying to get some hyper-specific level of UK/overseas or debt/equity split.

The whole point of funds like the Lifestrategy range (or HSBC Global Strategy, or L&G Multi Index etc etc etc) for people with £5k, £10k, £50k is that you put your money into their fund, and they allocate it for you, among maybe a dozen underlying specialist funds investing in indexes of investment in different areas. That fund *is* your portfolio.

They (Vanguard range, HSBC range, L&G range and their rivals) all offer a choice of different funds doing broadly similar things but a sliding scale of risk or volatility so you can decide if you want high equities / low equities on the vanguard range or if you want high risk / low risk on the HSBC or L&G range etc.

When investing £5k you don't need a whole portfolio of portfolios. Just buy something you think will work for your 15-20 year investment horizon and you're done.

You say the Vanguard funds are 'quite UK focused'. Looking at the equity bit (which is the majority of the fund whether you are doing 60 or 80%), three quarters of the equities are listed on foreign stock markets. Putting 75% of your equities wealth into foreign countries doesn't sound particularly 'UK focused'. Then, the quarter that's invested into UK-listed companies is allocated based on a stock market index which gives the largest share to the biggest companies, so about 40% of your 'UK equities' allocation will be going to the top ten UK-listed giants like HSBC, Shell, BP, Diageo, Unilever etc, which are all very 'international' businesses. Again, not a very 'UK-focused' way of investing.

If Vanguard seems right for you having considered the others, go for it. Likewise HSBC, L&G, Architas, BlackRock, anyone selling a fund-of-funds product with a range of risk options. Keep the costs down by all means but costs aren't everything and one fund from one provider on one platform is fine when you are investing £5k not £500k. You don't need to think, "ooh, I don't want my eggs in one basket, and I need a perfect exact split of the specific geographic regions and equity/non-profit equity which I know in advance will turn out to be the best, so I had better buy one core fund and then complement it with a few others". Buy one and be done. Reconsider when you have 10x more than you currently have.

As an example: you have £5000. You will maybe end up with £3000 to £4000 in equities, call it £3500. Let's say fund A puts an extra 3% of that £3500 into one particular region compared to fund B. That's £105. Then let's say that this particular region outperforms the region that B would have put it in, by a couple of percent, next year. Woo, you made an extra £2. But the next year you might fall short by £2 because fund B's selection happened to work out better instead and you had picked fund A. They are probably both fine for the long term. Your £5000 portfolio doesn't need five £1000 investments just to split the difference between them when you are talking £2 of gains or losses from one versus another.

The place to spend your time doing your thinking is do you want broadly higher risks or generally lower risks or something in between: where are you comfortable? Look at the different options and their target allocations to find a fund you could be happy with. Then buy it on the cheapest platform that offers it. Don't try to play "fund manager" and mash together several funds that were already pretty much fine right out of the box.

dunstonh

Do I want to see around 25% loss or 40% loss in a bad crash? Not sure, maybe I only want just over 30% loss with a small probably it would be worse. Seems reasonable to me.

The poster has £5k invested. I suspect you are playing devil's advocate with me. However, if he really has this 5% difference in loss acceptance then why not use a multi-asset fund like HSBC GSB which is slightly higher than VLS60 as well as being cheaper and avoids the UK bias?

Alexland

dunstonh wrote: »

The poster has £5k invested. I suspect you are playing devil's advocate with me. However, if he really has this 5% difference in loss acceptance then why not use a multi-asset fund like HSBC GSB which is slightly higher than VLS60 as well as being cheaper and avoids the UK bias?

£5k is still a lot of money to some people especially if it's their first experience of watching their money wobbling around. For current market conditions I like VLS60 above GSB for the bond currency hedging and better valuations on UK equities. I have a very similar asset allocation across my workplace pension and SIPP funds at the moment.

Alex

clsmooth48

Thanks for the advice guys. I’ve decided to just concentrate on the Vanguard LS funds for now rather than picking out other funds. I think I’ll mainly focus of 60 for now and continue putting in money monthly with a view to investing for 15-20 years. Maybe when I have a good deal more saved, I can look into other funds but for now, no need to overconplicate things.

Nardge

Good afternoon,

There has been much discussion in the forums regarding S&S and it's myriad variations!

I've tried to glean the essentials, and have also read MSE's S&S Guide beforehand

I'd be grateful if you could kindly confirm/refute/answer the following:

Vanguard Life Strategy:

Is amongst the best for someone who:

• Doesn't have much spare time
  
  
• Has relatively minimal knowledge/understanding
  
  
• Wants relatively cheap all-round fees
  
  
• Seeks broad diversity
  
  
• Seeks international investment e.g. China, and also within the UK
  
  

Does anyone know of any cashback links for opening the same?

Does anyone have a referral they'd like me to use for an agreement made by Private Message?

Stocks and Shares:

• Unless one has a vast amount of money non-ISA S&S is the preferable option?
  
  
• Switching non-ISA to ISA is only possible via Cash ISA (with attendant financial expense)?
  This would arise if/when I felt the latter was more favourable
  
  
• There is little point/no benefit in having several S&S ISA open concurrently (contrast P2P (Peer-to-Peer) ISAs)?
  
  
• It is possible to funnel P2P ISAs directly (from Holding Accounts) into S&S ISA?
  

Thanking you in advance

With Kind Regards

ColdIron

Duplicate post. Your questions are answered in your other post
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/75579987#Comment_75579987

Nardge

ColdIron wrote: »

Duplicate post. Your questions are answered in your other post
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/75579987#Comment_75579987

Yes, I posted across several threads due to time-urgency in gaining clarification

To anyone else reading the above, maybe post on the S&S ISA to keep the conversation in one place