Investment advice

robin248

Hi All,


I am after some advice please.


My wife and I have in the region of 80K currently in cash ISA earning less than 1% and therefore looking to invest elsewhere to provide a better return. Never really dabbled in S&S and a bit daunted; am in the process of taking advantage of the HL offer of "free" advice this month but conscious that they are not IFA, will charge 1% for the initial advice followed by the usual fund charges.


Issue for me is that I am a bit under confident to choose my own investments and don't always have the time although it does interest me. Can anyone offer some advice on investments or my thought about HL please??


For the record wife and I are in our mid 50s, I am in monthly payment of Ex-Mil pension, full time employment overpaying company pension contributions and have a rescue fund of 49K.


Many thanks

SonOf

am in the process of taking advantage of the HL offer of "free" advice this month but conscious that they are not IFA, will charge 1% for the initial advice followed by the usual fund charges.

All advisers have a free initial consultation.
HL are restricted FAs and offer their own brand funds on their own platform. Their platform is expensive and its own brands very expensive.

Issue for me is that I am a bit under confident to choose my own investments and don't always have the time although it does interest me. Can anyone offer some advice on investments or my thought about HL please??

If you need advice, then it should be an IFA. Not an FA and avoid the types that refer to themselves as wealth management (its not a 100% rule of thumb but you find most of those using the tag "wealth management" are not really IFAs as they put everyone on the same platform and use expesnive DFMs).

DrSyn

Before you invest remember

(a) If you think you will need the money within 5 years, keep it in a savings account. Do not invest it.

(b) You should stay invest for at least 10 years.

(c) Have any emergency cash fund, so you will not need to sell the fund when the market hits bad times.

You can make investing as easy or complicated as you choose. I go for easy.

As a newbie watch both of these:-

http://www.kroijer.com/

https://www.ifa.com/indexfundsthemovie/

Then consider investing in a low cost Global Multi Asset Fund, at a risk grade you are happy with.

Global Multi-Asset Funds:

Vanguard Life Strategy
HSBC Global Strategy
L&G Multi Index Funds
Blackrock Consensus
Architas Passive

The above funds have wide diversification while minimising risk, at low cost.

https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investing-explained/what-are-lifestrategy-funds?intcmpgn=lifestrategyfunds_learnmore_link

VLS fund:- With this they will re-balance it to the share/bond split you have chosen. You will have to except the market risk which comes with that split.

https://www.hsbc.co.uk/investments/isas/hsbc-global-strategy-portfolios

HSBC global stratergy: With this you chose Balanced, Dynamic etc. They will re-balance to maintain the risk level you have chosen.

If you cannot decide on which share/bond split or risk level. I would consider using, 60% share/40%bond, Balanced.


Just so you realise the markets do not always go up (Bull) but also can fall down a long way (Bear), take a long at the charts next to the photo:-

https://www.getrichslowly.org/bull-bear-markets/

This may be of interest to you:-
http://www.comparefundplatforms.com/compare.aspx


I hope this has been of help to you.

bostonerimus

Find out have your company pension is invested. You have a nice "rescue" fund so leave that alone.

I would use some of the 80k to put even more into your pension and also max out your S&S ISA contributions. As a 50 year old I would put it into a global multi-asset fund with about 60% equities ie VLS60 or the offerings from HSBC etc.

You don't need to make things complicated or pay for an IFA.

Albermarle

To put some approx. figures on the charges involved as you are new to the situation.

A low cost Multi asset fund of the kind suggested will have a charge of 0.22% to 0.25% a year .
The you have to hold it on a platform ( like HL ) . Cost varies depending on the platform but HL is the highest at 0.45% . Around 0.25%- 0.35% is more typical and can even be cheaper. So in total you are looking at around 0.5% pa .
It is almost guaranteed that the HL FA will recommend a more expensive actively managed fund or 'fund of funds ' and your total cost including the HL platform cost will be more like 2% pa.
Many newbie investors follow this path and is partly why HL is so profitable.

xylophone

Consider an ISA each with Vanguard?

https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investing-explained/stocks-shares-isa?cmpgn=PS0617UKPABIS0002&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIyICegsPG5AIVmK3tCh3F_QWbEAAYASAAEgJke_D_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

MarkCarnage

As Xylophone says, consider an ISA with a low cost provider such as Vanguard.

If you were to use ETFs/Investment Trusts, with HL your fees would be capped at £35 per annum in an ISA. HL is expensive if you hold funds and/or deal quite often, but it's not bad at all if you hold shares (including investment trusts) or ETFs and don't deal often.

I use them for SIPP, iSA and share account. I am currently paying a bit more than I would like, but a few switches from funds would likely bring my total bill down to about £300-400 a year, which is more than some, but they do provide a decent service, and at that level it would be pretty competitive and under 5bps annual charge for me.