First time investor - Vanguard (how often do you check your ISA?)

soprano81

Hi all,

I have recently started paying into The Vanguard Lifestrategy 80% Equity, 0.22% ongoing charge
I am looking to put in between £300-£500 per month and it is a long term investment of at least 10 years. I already have enough cash and pension payments.

My question is what are your thoughts on the fund and also how often do you check your funds performance? I ask as a few weeks ago I was 7% up and am now 4% down. I have a cash ISA maturing next week of £3k and unsure whether to invest all into Vanguard at once or drip feed.
Do you review your ISA say annually then decide whether to move it?

Many Thanks
(some great advice on here by the way)

capital0ne

Don't keep on checking, maybe monthly is okay, but why do it?

What will happen is you'll see a 10% drop, panic and sell!

This is long term, 10yrs plus so fund it, and take achill pill and it will grow

Good luck

Socajam

capital0ne - I agree once a month, otherwise you will send yourself crazy

cattie

I have an isa in the same fund along with other funds. In the past I only ever really checked how things were doing 2 or 3 times a year. I'd get a valuation every 6 months from the platform.


Currently I'm in the process of getting everything switched over to a new platform, so have been quite aware of how the values are doing. However, once all the funds are safely switched I'll probably check on values approx every 3 months or so, especially as I aim to end up with just 2 or 3 invest & forget funds like the Vanguard LS.

[Deleted User]

Exactly. You can check every half year or so, to "ping" if your platform is still around and Vanguard is doing well. Other then that, there is no reason to watch and to interfere.

capital0ne

cattie wrote: »

Currently I'm in the process of getting everything switched over to a new platform,

Just out of interest, who are you swirching from and to and why? Charges, Range of funds or something else?

Sea_Shell

It's like picking a scab...you know you shouldn't, but....

How do you plead to the charge of Frequently checking your investments?... Guilty m'lord.

quirkydeptless

I find my investments perform far better when I don't look at them!

System

I check mine far too often but I don't panic when there's a drop. In fact if I've got some money sat there I'll use that drop to bang more in.

I'll say this: I've seen some 10% falls over the 3 years I've had one which I paid into monthly until April in addition to some lump sums but there's not a single penny that is in there which has now lost any value even after this last week's fall which has been triggered by a simultaneous drop in the price of oil coupled with The Donald's upping of the trade war with China. .

I'd say that if you're 4% down now so its 11% cheaper than last week when you were 7% up and you have a lump sum then surely that would be a better time to buy than when it was 11% more expensive last week?

lpgm

soprano81 wrote: »

I already have enough cash and pension payments.

If your pension is a defined contribution scheme or a SIPP, you probably aren't a first time investor! How has that been moving around?

I look at my portfolio regularly, but I know I'm not going to do anything stupid.

AnotherJoe

The thing to understand is that you aren't really investing in "the fund". What you've decided to do is invest in a mix of 80% global equities and 20% global bonds. So the fund is rising or falling in response to what all those underlying thousands of companies and bonds are doing also mitigated by dollar and euro exchange rates with Sterling.
As long as that's still what you want to do, there's no point looking to see how "the funds performance" is doing. It's just reflecting the global economies. Any other fund with the same mix will be doing very similarly.
FWIW what you specifically should be hoping for, as you've just started, is that it's doing lousy. Really badly. For a few years. Because you want to be buying into all those companies when they are cheap. So, if you see it's dropping, chin up, in the long term you'll do better..
Re your cash investment, statistically you'd do best to invest it as lump sum.
And when you said "do you look to move after a year", move what ? If you mean, in your case, move it to a different ISA same fUnds, why would you do that? If you mean change to a different fund, why woudl you do that unless you decide to go more cautious or more risky? Bearing in mind the counterintuitive result that the worse it does the better for you. Note that this is because you chose an index fund. If you chose an active fund you might well decide the manager has lost the plot and change ships. If you are passive investing, which you are, there's little point doing that. There's no manager to dump just the global economy !