investing/saving

[Deleted User]

You’re right. I know you’re right. I’ve always patted myself on the back for being a great saver! Little did I know that wasn’t ever going to be enough. 

bowlhead99

Deleted_User said:

You’re right. I know you’re right. I’ve always patted myself on the back for being a great saver! Little did I know that wasn’t ever going to be enough. 

Well, now you can pat yourself on the back for at least realising now that it wasn't enough (which is sometimes a realisation that some people don't make until even later, keeping their head in the sand longer) and get to stuffing that pension

[Deleted User]

  I’ve organised for 25% instead of 10% of my salary to go into my AE pension. But I do want an S & S ISA , although I don’t want to pay charges 🙄😝 So I need to find the right platform for me to invest in that ISA 🥳

[Deleted User]

And again - thank you for your time and patience. I’m truly very grateful 😊

bowlhead99

The more well-known and profitable ISA platforms do charge for the service, so charges are pretty unavoidable, otherwise they won't stay in business, which wouldn't be ideal if you want to be able to get your money back easily....

There are different fee structures as you'll see, so for example Halifax Sharedealing or their sister brand IWeb will give you a basic ISA for a small fixed annual fee (or no annual fee in the case of IWeb, after an initial account setup charge). But they would charge you for every buy and sell transaction meaning that if all you were going to do was put £5000 in and leave it, it would be efficient, but if you were going to add a few hundred pounds every month or every quarter they may end up more expensive overall than some of the other providers who have a percentage annual fee but a smaller dealing fee. 

So you have to have an idea of what and when you're likely to want to invest, before you go shopping for the services.

Albermarle

Deleted_User said:

  I’ve organised for 25% instead of 10% of my salary to go into my AE pension. But I do want an S & S ISA , although I don’t want to pay charges 🙄😝 So I need to find the right platform for me to invest in that ISA 🥳

Financial products providers are like any other service - they have to charge money for the service or they go out of business.
Having said that there are some very low cost ISA's available and one I know is even zero cost . However as in all things in life you get what you pay for to some extent. As a newer investor with lots of new facts and issues to think about , the last thing you want is people who do not answer the phone or even worse go bust . So going for the cheapest provider is probably not such a good idea.
As said HL are the most expensive so a middle ground could be : AJ Bell ( 0.25% ) or Fidelity ( 0.35% + £25 cashback) . Or Vanguard ( 0.15% but only Vanguard funds ) All  reputable, established  companies.
Do not forget whichever investment funds you pick there will be a charge for those as well . The kind of low cost multi asset funds discussed before will cost around 0.25% 

[Deleted User]

Thank you both again. I think investing in an ISA makes it slightly less scary as I already have cash ISAs. Silly really. It’s all about perception! 

cloud_dog

Deleted_User said:

  I’ve organised for 25% instead of 10% of my salary to go into my AE pension. But I do want an S & S ISA , although I don’t want to pay charges 🙄😝 So I need to find the right platform for me to invest in that ISA 🥳

Soooo, an option to support low charges and ongoing monthly investment might be to:

1. Open a Vanguard S&S General Investment Account (GIA), i.e. not the S&S ISA
2. Set up a monthly investment in to your chosen Vanguard fund
3. Periodically (every few years, depending on the amount involved), sell the investment in the Vanguard GIA and transfer the cash in to an iWeb S&S ISA
4. Make a single purchase in iWeb (£5) in to your chosen fund
5. There is no ongoing iWeb platform charge (although there will be a one off account opening fee of £25) 
6. Continue with the monthly investing in to the Vanguard S&S GIA
7. Rinse and repeat

I appreciate this might seem a little convoluted but, it is a neat way of keeping charges low, especially when investing using relatively small amounts (relative to the possible transaction charges).  The above would cost you approximately 90p a year in Vanguard (based on 12 x £100 monthly investments and ignoring any growth in the investments), and £5 with iWeb.

Just a thought.

bowlhead99

cloud_dog said:
I appreciate this might seem a little convoluted but, it is a neat way of keeping charges low, especially when investing using relatively small amounts (relative to the possible transaction charges).  The above would cost you approximately 90p a year in Vanguard (based on 12 x £100 monthly investments and ignoring any growth in the investments), and £5 with iWeb.

Just a thought.

There's obviously a lot of different ways to dance around the various providers and try to get the 'best of both worlds' in terms of an annual cost vs transaction-based cost etc etc.

The problem with trying to shuffle money between platforms is just that it becomes a bit of a hassle to do it if you were hoping to just hold your investments for a simple life. It can take a couple of weeks to turn your investments into cash with the old provider, follow the ISA transfer process to move the money to a different provider, and then re-buy the same or similar assets at the new place, and during that time the investment markets might be moving up or down a few percent from one week to the next.

For example you gradually build up to about £2.5 to £3k at Vanguard over the course of a couple of years and then realise it's going to cost you about £4 to keep that amount of money at Vanguard for another year, so you'd prefer to move it to IWeb where you could just pay a one off fiver to buy it and hold indefinitely (at least, until you want to pay another one off fiver to sell it, and assuming the fees don't get increased at some point).

But then when you come to move the money, not only do you need to spend £5 to do the purchase at IWeb but  perhaps the stock market moves during the course of the couple of weeks that  you're waiting for the money to arrive at IWeb and be available to invest, and during that time the market randomly goes up 3% without you, and those missed returns cost you £80-90 which would have paid the Vanguard fees for a decade or more on that amount of money.

Of course, statistically the market won't move very far over the course of a fortnight as on average it might only go up 5-10% over the course of an entire year, and is almost just as likely to go down instead, giving you a benefit when you buy the fund back at a cheaper price. However, statistics and probability are only one part of it, and it would psychologically be annoying if you shifted platforms to save only a few pounds of fees and ended up missing out on a nice return due to 'unlucky' market timing.

cloud_dog

Yes but, statistically, you'll lose 50% of the time and you'll gain 50% of the time