How old were you when you started investing (workplace pension not included)

Novice_investor101

I had a DB pension from my first proper job. I started investing at age 35 in 2017 when I left that employer to work for a financial firm. Wish I’d known about investing a lot sooner. I wasted so much cash in those 12 years!

I don’t consider myself a high earner, in fact when I left my old job I took a 50% pay cut (my mental health had had enough. Still my best decision ever). 

I opened a LISA & stocks ISA & paid in a regular £200 a month into each & odd lump sums. ISA is at £21k now (was £24k before January 2022) & LISA is at £13k (was £14k). 

I don’t think that’s bad considering my late start & single income. I went 100% equity with a slant towards tech funds. 

It matches pretty much my new workplace DC scheme that receives pretty the same gross contribution by sal sac. 

daz378

55 about  14 months ago....but paid off debt  10 years  ago and building savings since in normal  savings account since...stocks and shares isa  from 14 months  ago is 8% down...but I continue to add   around 50 pound a month and also add to savings...my public sector  DB pension   will hopefully be the bulwark   of my pension income...as a carer my work stressful  so glad I dont need to do overtime 

lozzy1965

Far far too long ago to remember but late teens or early 20's, way way before the internet was 'a thing'.  My father had a broker and we played with penny shares (on their dubious recommendations) as well as some better known ones, Not quite day trading, but maybe I'd call it month trading.  Got paper certificates in the post.  Paid by cheque in the post.  Deals cost - I think - £25 each (a lot of money back then).  It was a good lesson in how to sleep when you are 90% down, a good lesson in avoiding penny shares when I had more money to invest and a good lesson in spreading the risk.  Got married and had kids, paused my investing with a few long term holdings and then started again in earnest in my late 30's.  So I have invested through the late 80's crash, the dot com crash, the banking crisis crash, brexit and the covid crash!   About to retire now, so you've just had my life story   Pretty boring life eh

madlyn

46, I opened a VLS60 S&S ISA last November, £500 initial deposit and I should probably look at making a regular payment into it.

bostonerimus

I started saving at Uni - back in the early 80s that was still possible. I got my first job at age 25 and the pension was a deferred annuity that I still have and has ticked away and compounded nicely. My pension was very conservative and so I supplemented it with a Fidelity S&P500 equity index fund and the Magellan Fund in a regular investment account.

Beddie

I bought into the flotations of TSB and British Gas in the 80s, when I was 19. Also had company shares from SAYE in my 20s. I started investing with Hargreaves Lansdown in the late 90s, just in time for the tech bubble and crash.

In fact my timing has been dire - always cautious or adventurous exactly when I should be the opposite. 

cloud_dog

23.  I joined a financial institution (well a Friendly Society TBH), and they had a black box that provided real-time pricing on a TV (MarketEye or something like that), but it also had a data feed you could accept and the investment manager was keen for these prices to be fed in to the IT system so that they could see real-time movement (and the other data, change, NAV, yield, etc).  Anyway long story short, in addition to capturing data for the organisations investments, I also wrote a simple system for myself and in essence ran my own little virtual and real portfolio using Investment Trusts.  Investments were by phone, and I think it cost me £30 per trade!!!!

Whether my activities proved good or not has been consigned to the vastness of history, but I really enjoyed it