Increasing deposits in light of covid19?

port_of_spain

JustAnotherSaver said:

2) Depends what you call 'large' but probably not. It is possible for me to put a years contributions in in one whack today. Sure things may drop further and i 'should've' waited until next week, or the week after or whenever the 'bottom' is but it's dropped pretty low as it currently stands so today would be as good a starting point as any.

Point is, lump sump deposit is an option.

Well, we don't know whether now is the perfect time to put in a lump sum. We know it's a better time than a few weeks ago. But there may be better times in the near future (i.e. deeper falls, before the recovery). Since the drops and the subsequent recovery could take almost any shape — over weeks, months, a year, or multiple years — I can't see any problem with stepping up contributions now, and then maintaining them at a similar level for 10+ years.

If you have additional cash available that you could optionally invest now as a lump sum (without depleting your emergency fund), then putting it in now is perfectly valid, but it might turn out to be less good than delaying investing it until (for instance) a few months later. In that case, would you think: so what, I got a good price, even if a better price was available later on? Or would you regret it? If you'd regret it, then you might prefer to phase in any extra investments over (for instance) a year. Though a year might not turn out to be the ideal period to use — this too is guesswork.

JustAnotherSaver said:

3) The forum is like a crossword puzzle. People love to talk in cryptics. In plain no messing about English, what are you saying at the end of your post?

masonic said:

I think port_of_spain's last sentence is suggesting that there are lots of people not posting about what they are doing, and those people are doing nothing.

Exactly. And I then went on to start a thread asking what people are doing, and in which most replies so far say that they're doing nothing: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6114753/what-have-the-markets-done-to-your-asset-allocation-and-what-if-anything-have-you-done-in-response

JustAnotherSaver

1) I could delete bits but where i want to quote a bit of what you say, then reply to it, then have another bit of what you say and then reply under that - i couldn't do that.  Much easier on the old forum. I can't do it here for some reason.

2) Regards how would i feel. Yeah of course there'd be a part of me that would feel "if only" if i didn't time it to perfection. I think that every Thursday night when my numbers don't come up on the Set for Life Lotto game. If only i'd picked the right ones. If only i'd picked 10 instead of 9. What if i got in before that guy and got his scratch card instead of mine, would i have won?

Fact is it's dropped off quite an amount. VLS80 is one of my holdings. HSBC Global Strat Dynamic is held as well between my wife and I. At some point i expect these will rise again. Since i'll still be working in 30 years time it's not really a concern i have right now.

3) I know many go around the forum seeing what others have posted to form some sort of profile of that person. That's not my thing. I  take everything at face value. I don't go looking if they've made other posts or threads.

BrockStoker

Work out the minimum sum you can invest without fees taking a significant chunk, then divide your lump sum appropriately. Invest one lot now, and wait for another significant drop before investing the next.

The danger of course is that the worst is over, and you don't get another chance to buy in at a lower level. Probably best to buy the dips in that case, but try to keep one portion of cash free - cash is an often overlooked diversifer, and having some available can protect you if things go downhill even further, although at this stage I think that is one of the slightly less lightly possibilities.
The market can easily go sideways for a while, but as long as you are investing for the long term that shouldn't matter.

masonic

JustAnotherSaver said:

1) I could delete bits but where i want to quote a bit of what you say, then reply to it

Yes

JustAnotherSaver said:

then have another bit of what you say and then reply under that - i couldn't do that.

What, like this?

JustAnotherSaver said:

Much easier on the old forum. I can't do it here for some reason.

I actually think it's easier on this forum, when you know how. For this post, I simply hit the quote button 3 times to pull down three copies of your post, selected some text and hit the delete key, then added my comments between each bit. No messing around with BBCode required now.

bowlhead99

masonic said:
I actually think it's easier on this forum, when you know how. For this post, I simply hit the quote button 3 times to pull down three copies of your post, selected some text and hit the delete key, then added my comments between each bit. No messing around with BBCode required now.

@masonic - On my browsers if I hit quotes multiple times in succession (whether the same post multiple times, or multiple posts), I don't have space to put my cursor between the posts, unless I go into the code view to break it up.

And on mobile I can't even go into code view until I first enable rotation/landscape view, as portrait view isn't wide enough to show all the tools. So I would have to change a phone settling, flip the phone around, hit the button, flip it back again to do my typing comfortably...

Generally to multiquote I need to grab the quote, edit it down, get a bit of my own typing in, and then grab the next quote from that point.

masonic

bowlhead99 said:

masonic said:
I actually think it's easier on this forum, when you know how. For this post, I simply hit the quote button 3 times to pull down three copies of your post, selected some text and hit the delete key, then added my comments between each bit. No messing around with BBCode required now.

@masonic - On my browsers if I hit quotes multiple times in succession (whether the same post multiple times, or multiple posts), I don't have space to put my cursor between the posts, unless I go into the code view to break it up.

And on mobile I can't even go into code view until I first enable rotation/landscape view, as portrait view isn't wide enough to show all the tools. So I would have to change a phone settling, flip the phone around, hit the button, flip it back again to do my typing comfortably...

Generally to multiquote I need to grab the quote, edit it down, get a bit of my own typing in, and then grab the next quote from that point.

That's strange, mine are inserted with a line break (<br>) between blockquote tags and I can start typing between them without having to go to code view. That's on Firefox/Ubuntu (Edit: also seems to work on Chrome/Win10 at work). Good workaround though.

bowlhead99

masonic said:

bowlhead99 said:

masonic said:
I actually think it's easier on this forum, when you know how. For this post, I simply hit the quote button 3 times to pull down three copies of your post, selected some text and hit the delete key, then added my comments between each bit. No messing around with BBCode required now.

@masonic - On my browsers if I hit quotes multiple times in succession (whether the same post multiple times, or multiple posts), I don't have space to put my cursor between the posts, unless I go into the code view to break it up.

And on mobile I can't even go into code view until I first enable rotation/landscape view, as portrait view isn't wide enough to show all the tools. So I would have to change a phone settling, flip the phone around, hit the button, flip it back again to do my typing comfortably...

Generally to multiquote I need to grab the quote, edit it down, get a bit of my own typing in, and then grab the next quote from that point.

That's strange, mine are inserted with a line break (<br>) between blockquote tags and I can start typing between them without having to go to code view. That's on Firefox/Ubuntu (Edit: also seems to work on Chrome/Win10 at work). Good workaround though.

For me, Chrome/Win10, Edge/Win10 or Chrome/Android phone, if I quote two things in succession I just get the second<blockquote> starting right after the previous </blockquote> has closed. The second chunk is shown on a new line in the code but codewise there's no <br> between them or even so much as a nbsp.

masonic

So you are not seeing this then?

I just hit the quote button twice, then placed the cursor so you can see there is more than just a new line between quotes. Here is what I see if I quote twice and immediately switch to code view (my bold):

...or even so much as a nbsp.</div>
</blockquote>
<br><blockquote class="Quote">
  <div><a rel="nofollow">bowlhead99</a> said:...

I've also had a go on Android and get the same result, although the cursor is annoyingly placed within the last quote block and I have to dismiss the keyboard and re-select the reply box to place the cursor elsewhere. I don't even have access to code view in Android in landscape orientation - perhaps my screen resolution isn't high enough or I have to request desktop site.

bowlhead99

 Yes that code is how i imagined it would be when you explained it earlier.  Whereas what I get looks like the below (not enough space for a cursor, and no <br> between them when looking at code view)

(code view looking like this:

...have to request desktop site.<br></div><br><br></div>

</blockquote>

<blockquote class="Quote">

  <div><a rel="nofollow">masonic</a> said:</div>

  <div><div>So you are not seeing this then?</div>

JustAnotherSaver

Whoa what's all this code stuff?

Much easier on the old forum imo. Hit quote, stick [/quote] at the end of what you want to reply to

Delete out what you don't want to reply to, highlight the next chunk you want to reply to and hit the quote symbol for it to be auto-quoted, job done. So much easier..... and quicker.

But back on topic, the plan was (before all this madness) to move to LISA contributions rather than pension ones. AJ Bell seems cheaper than H/Lansdown but you get hit £1.50 per time for trading. Not quite sure which platform will work out cheaper in the long run for a LISA.