Stocks and Shares ISAs

BarJK7

Hi, I 've been researching these a bit but am still confused.
Are any suitable for a small(ish) lump sum investment (with low management costs) but no or very low monthly contribution?
A lot of the lower cost ones I had been looking at (e.g. Vanguard require a monthly commitment of £100 that I don't want to tie myself to).
Thanks in advance
Bar.

Zero_Sum

Vanguard is a bit misleading. It's only £100 pcm if you have nothing invested.
If you lump in £500, then you can set up ongoing monthly contributions for as little as you want.

BarJK7

Thanks Zero. Could that include no monthly contributions but adding in as able (and within the current ISA limits)?

bowlhead99

Yes that's fine, as long as you meet the minimum requirement for your first investment.

If they say the minimum is (e.g.) £500 lump or setting up a plan of £100pm, it's because they don't want to bother setting up an investment account for you where you add a fiver's worth of an investment fund to your portfolio (0.15% of a fiver being less than a penny of platform fee for them). So the idea is that you would buy a decent chunk of it or commit to building up to a decent chunk over time.

If you met their minimum by investing £500 once, you could later add whatever you fancy from time to time. If you met their minimum by investing £100 a month, it doesn't matter that you don't have £500 initially.

If you don't have £500 available now, and you don't have £100 a month spare, there is probably no real gains to be made by throwing a few pounds at a Vanguard product anyway. For example you could have a high interest rate current account at Nationwide (Flex Direct) which pays 5% on up to £2500, which is about three times the rate of inflation. You could save there until you had enough money to meet the minimums. If you li only have a few quid there is no point putting it in a Vanguard investment fund which exposes you to investment risk and might quite easily return lower than a 5% rate of return over the next year.

Zero_Sum

BarJK7 wrote: »

Thanks Zero. Could that include no monthly contributions but adding in as able (and within the current ISA limits)?

Yeah, you can either set up regular DD's or just make debit card payments as & when

BarJK7

Thanks both. I would likely be putting £1 or £2k in or maybe £500 first to try it out.
I 'think' with the Flex Direct you have to commit to a certain amount per month, but I might have got that wrong. 
One further question though please. 
I have had an existing cash ISA account for quite some time that already had a balance and then I added this year's full allowance as well.  
Now I have read about transfers or ISAs but am still confused. 
Do I have to either transfer all of this years' allowance over* (if I want to open a stocks and shares ISA), or does the fact that I had an existing balance mean that I can transfer a smaller amount to open up a stocks and shares ISA and maybe an Innovative Investment one (leaving most in my cash ISA)?
Alternatively do I need to wait until April 6th when presumably I can transfer whatever proportion I want to other ISA account types?
If that* is the case then to slightly complicate matters I am thinking of switching cash ISAs as mine currently has a paltry 0.8% rate. 

Thanks in advance

xylophone

 https://moneytothemasses.com/saving-for-your-future/investing/isa-transfers-explained-everything-need-know

BarJK7 said:

I 'think' with the Flex Direct you have to commit to a certain amount per month, but I might have got that wrong. 

If you have not had a Flexdirect account before, then you can earn 5% on up to £2500 for one year.
There is a requirement to pay in £1000 a month from a non NW account but this can be done on an in and out basis - you could even withdraw £1000 from NW to an account with another bank and then send it straight back again.

BarJK7

Thanks Xylophone, I can see the Flex is a good idea but I don't want the hassle of transferring in and out in case of any mishaps and missed bills. 

sabretoothtigger

Legal and General it would be 500 and 50 per month which isnt a great deal but its over 2 years so adds upto something.
I dont know if they let me pick any unit trust I want.  Seems to be they very much want people to use the L&G managed funds, but I wanted Investec gold which would draw gasps for its daringly high risk.   But is it allowed, cant seem to know before I open so i presume not.