Help me understand passive managed funds

Bombinogandy

I am fairly new to this forum so wanted to ask a question about Vanguard life strategy fund.

A little background...

I have never invested in funds or shares before and always have put money in cash ISA’s and regular savers account. My main bank have stopped regular saver account last year and one that I currently have with other bank will not have same rate of interest as last time, mainly because of reduction in BoE base rate.

I have been reading articles on the internet where it is talked that share market has dropped over 30% and it’s a good time to invest in individual stock, shares and funds. As I don’t much experience of stocks so I would rather skip this option as I may pick the stock/share that would not work in my favour.

The strategy that we have is to park some cash of about 3K, let’s say in Vanguard life strategy 60/40 funds and pay about £100 each month for the funds to accumulate over long term, 5-10 years since these funds are passively managed with low maintenance and yearly cost. I am in mid-30’s so though I can take some risk with 60[equity]/40[bonds] or 80[equity]/20[bond] even if these funds go down on short run but on a long run it would return back better return than an yearly regular savers account with banks.

When I look at the share of an individual company, FTSE 100 or S&P500 I can see the graph over a period of years I can see their past performance and the same is true of Life Strategy funds.

The question I have is when you invest in shares you know what is the value of each share that you have bought on a given date and how they perform afterwards. Is the same true with LS funds? It may be a silly question but I rather ask before making my mind to buy LS funds

george4064

Not sure what you are getting at here.

You can view your Vanguard funds via their website (requires you to login etc) including their latest price, the units you hold and the value of those units. Vanguard will take into account your purchases/sales to calculate how much the units you currently hold cost and how much gain/loss they are showing. Their website also has graphs, price feeds etc you are free to look at to analyse how the funds are performing, their volatility etc.

Albermarle

Unlike shares these types of funds have a price that is calculated daily. For Vanguard LS funds it is at 21.00 . So the price you see today is from 21.00 yesterday evening and the price you would get if you bought now would be the one on Friday evening, If you are investing long term this 'delay' will make no difference .
Your general idea seems good but just a couple of comments
I have been reading articles on the internet where it is talked that share market has dropped over 30% and it’s a good time to invest in individual stock, shares and funds. As I don’t much experience of stocks so I would rather skip this option as I may pick the stock/share that would not work in my favour. 
There are no certainties in investing so nobody can for sure say this is a good time to invest, it is only their opinion .
Investing in individual shares is risky so you are correct to concentrate on diversified multi asset funds like Life Strategy( or similar )
even if these funds go down on short run but on a long run it would return back better return than an yearly regular savers account with banks. 
In theory and looking back in history this is correct but nothing is guaranteed. I am not trying to put you off what seems a sensible strategy but best not to think in terms of certainty about the future  , as we can all see at the moment.