New to investing my personal circumstances and what I wan't to achieve

Linton

GotPrincess said:

Do you want broad help? If so some broad questions:
 - What do you want the money for?  How much and when will you want it?  This is the starting point.  Your intentions can change in the future, they may be impossible to achieve or you may simply change your mind.  That is fine.  But without some objectives how you invest and what you invest in is pretty arbitrary.
A) If I had to pluck a magic figure out of the air then buy the time I hit 60-68 id like say £200,000 which given my lifestyle should be just fine till I end up underground 
 - How much can you afford to contribute?  How secure do you think your future income is?
I've not really sat down and thought about this BUT I belive if i continue as I am I can afford to do around £1,000 a month across a range of investments
2) If you dont want a pension (in my view your reasons are suspect and possibly ill-informed, but that is up to you) you should at least be using an S&S ISA.  It provides complete protection from tax and avoids the need to keep detailed records for HMRC.
C) Is this something the vangard platform offers although im leaning towards having a pension and investments now 
3) Nothing wrong with VLS80.  There are many worse options you could have chosen.  But it would be wrong to see it as "slow and steady".  In a crash like others in the past 50 years it could fall by perhaps 40% when VLS100 drops 50%, so not much difference in practice.  From what has been said on this forum before It is at or beyond the higher risk end of what many inexperienced investors would be happy with.  Think carefully about what you would do In the event of it falling 40%. If the answer could be "sell it all to protect what is left" then it is probably too risky for you.
I wouldn't sell it my look on life is there is always more money in the world to be earned the question is would I be happy having to 'work' for a living

A/B) Instead of picking a number out of the air you should base it on what income you require above State Pension.  However even if  both your investments and your contribution increases just matched inflation your £12K/year you would reach £240K at current prices by the time you were 60.  If the investment returns were 2% above inflation, which on historical experience is undemanding, you would have a pot of £300K at current prices.

That is good.  But on the downside the amount of sustainable inflation adjusted income you can get from a £300K lump sum is  lower than many people may think - say around £11K/year.  However if you retired at 60 you would need to bridge the gap until your SP at 68 it should give you a lower total ongoing income of around £17500, ignoring your small work pension. Would that be sufficient?

These are very rough figures intended to give you the order of magnitude of what may be reasonable.   But remember it is dependent on you keeping up your contributions for the rest of your working life, and increasing them with inflation.  Of course if you are planning to use your investments to buy a house/flat the numbers would be very different.

C)  You may be confusing several different things....
At the bottom level there are funds, in your case VLS80.  A very wide range of such funds can be held together in a Stocks & Shares ISA, a pension (eg SIPP) or an unsheltered account (General Investment Account (GIA)).  The account is held on a platform eg HL, or Vanguard and many others.  The Vanguard platform only lets you hold Vanguard funds.  Most platforms support SIPPs, S&S ISAs and GIAs.

An S&S ISA is sheltered from tax but the contributions are not.  The pension has tax sheltered contributions and is sheltered from tax on investment gains.  But any withdrawals from a SIPP are 25% tax free and 75% taxed as Income via PAYE whereas withdrawals from an S&S ISA are not subject to any tax.

So a SIPP makes particularly good sense if you are a higher rate tax payer whilst contributing but only pay basic rate in retirement.

Eco_Miser

Best place to compare brokers/platforms: https://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/ or a downloadable spreadsheet at https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5583030need to do the research yourself because each platform uses a different charging structure, so how you invest can make a big difference.

GotPrincess

Eco_Miser said:

Best place to compare brokers/platforms: https://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/ or a downloadable spreadsheet at https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5583030need to do the research yourself because each platform uses a different charging structure, so how you invest can make a big difference.

Just looked at that table n now my heads more mashed haha

Aceace

GotPrincess said:

...
My risk profile I honestly would put me right at the top as being care free and as such I went for that product I would like to invest in riskier products alongside a slow and steady approach to the VGLS80 product.
...

I think you've been given some good advice above, especially with regards to getting some free cash by investing in a pension. However, it didn't seem to be what you were asking for. So...

Like yourself, I have some cash that I like to invest in high risk / potentially high reward ventures. I'm a big fan of P2P investments (an extremely small club on this forum), so here's a link to https://www.axiafunder.com/.
They offer P2P investments in litigation funding cases. It's the highest risk of all my riskier investments as there's an outside chance that you could lose more than your investment (make sure you've fully understood this). I've invested in 8 cases so far, only 2 have concluded: one returned 43% after 8 months, the other returned 93.8% after 15 months. Minimum investment is £500 per case, and they're pretty few and far between.

Disclosure: I liked the concept and platform so much that I've made an equity investment in them (you could argue that this is an ever higher risk / potential reward).

Albermarle

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/investments/
Probably worth a read .

MaxiRobriguez

Aceace said:

GotPrincess said:

...
My risk profile I honestly would put me right at the top as being care free and as such I went for that product I would like to invest in riskier products alongside a slow and steady approach to the VGLS80 product.
...

I think you've been given some good advice above, especially with regards to getting some free cash by investing in a pension. However, it didn't seem to be what you were asking for. So...

Like yourself, I have some cash that I like to invest in high risk / potentially high reward ventures. I'm a big fan of P2P investments (an extremely small club on this forum), so here's a link to https://www.loseyamoney.com/.
They offer P2P investments in litigation funding cases. It's the highest risk of all my riskier investments as there's an outside chance that you could lose more than your investment (make sure you've fully understood this). I've invested in 8 cases so far, only 2 have concluded: one returned 43% after 8 months, the other returned 93.8% after 15 months. Minimum investment is £500 per case, and they're pretty few and far between.

Disclosure: I liked the concept and platform so much that I've made an equity investment in them (you could argue that this is an ever higher risk / potential reward).

Not suitable for 99% of people, let alone someone new to investing. Not convinced it should be on this forum as a plug, even with the disclosure. 

Aceace

MaxiRobriguez said:

Aceace said:

GotPrincess said:

...
My risk profile I honestly would put me right at the top as being care free and as such I went for that product I would like to invest in riskier products alongside a slow and steady approach to the VGLS80 product.
...

I think you've been given some good advice above, especially with regards to getting some free cash by investing in a pension. However, it didn't seem to be what you were asking for. So...

Like yourself, I have some cash that I like to invest in high risk / potentially high reward ventures. I'm a big fan of P2P investments (an extremely small club on this forum), so here's a link to https://www.loseyamoney.com/.
They offer P2P investments in litigation funding cases. It's the highest risk of all my riskier investments as there's an outside chance that you could lose more than your investment (make sure you've fully understood this). I've invested in 8 cases so far, only 2 have concluded: one returned 43% after 8 months, the other returned 93.8% after 15 months. Minimum investment is £500 per case, and they're pretty few and far between.

Disclosure: I liked the concept and platform so much that I've made an equity investment in them (you could argue that this is an ever higher risk / potential reward).

Not suitable for 99% of people, let alone someone new to investing. Not convinced it should be on this forum as a plug, even with the disclosure. 

It wasn't a plug. It was a direct response to what was asked for, unlike the majority of the other responses which I've no doubt were well intentioned.