Starting my S&S ISA again with Bestinvest

Alexland

Hi - sorry I have been away from the forum for much of the past year dealing with a painful divorce and didn't want to think about investments as I wasn't entirely clear on how our assets would be divided.

Anyway the mediation is nearly complete and it seems I am keeping my pensions (yay), keeping my LISA (yay), buying my wife out of the house with a bigger mortgage (hmm) and have completely sold down my iWeb S&S ISA and VCT shares to pay for it (booo).

Overall happy I guess as I get to keep the 2 biggest assets (the pensions and house) and am getting around 50/50 care of the children. It's not the lifestyle I wanted for our childen but the divorce wasn't my choice and there's nothing I can do about it so have learnt to accept it. I was finding home life pretty unpleasant towards the end so on reflection am glad she moved out. I've still got management of the kids JISAs and SIPPs.

I must be recovering as I am here again and have signed up for a Bestinvest ISA when they were offering £110 for an investment of £1k via Topcashback a few days ago. It's nothing like the scale of the iWeb ISA that I used to hold but it's a start. There didn't seem to be a minimum staying period in the offer terms so at 0.4% platform fee I will transfer it once the cashback is payable. Probably somewhere cheaper like Vanguard or Fidelity (as I still get the Wealth 0.2% rate as they have my capped SIPP).

Things will be harder going forward with a big house to maintain on a single income. Recent months have been particularly expensive replacing items removed from the property and paying legal costs but I can finally see the end of the process. Still trying to retire at 55 but anything earlier won't be possible now.

Alex

Alistair31

Hi Alex, your absence was certainly noticed, by me at least - but I suspect many others. 

All the best through this challenging time. 

Alexland

Thanks I have been digging through recent messages to catchup with the topics and it's nice to see how posters have developed their investment experiences. As we near the end of the tax year I expect to see lots of quick-fire technical ISA questions!

masonic

Great to see you back. Many will look back on 2022 as a tough year, but that's next level. Glad there's light at the end of the tunnel.

Alexland

masonic said:

Great to see you back. Many will look back on 2022 as a tough year, but that's next level. Glad there's light at the end of the tunnel.

Yeah was pretty tough as we continued to live together until she moved out a month ago and she made it pretty clear that I wasn't welcome in the house on the days and nights she was scheduled to look after the kids so I heavily used my swimming pool and cinema memberships. Stress, lack of hunger and exercise caused me to lose a few stone and am now within a healthy BMI range for the first time in a couple of decades. I was willing to try anything to make the marriage work but learned it is only possible if you both want it and she had already developed relationships elsewhere.
Anyway the ISA investments did their job and provided a safety net that has enabled us both to have enough money to have nice family houses supported by affordable mortgages. The ISAs also covered several months where outgoings exceeded income.
As there will be no pension sharing order then with modest growth my existing investments will already use most of the LTA at 55 so I am going to cut back on contributions in April and only pay enough to get employer matching plus any bonuses. As my wife has moved out then drawing the extra income from next tax year will be compatible with her claiming child benefit. I just added this tax year's LISA contribution too as I had been wavering incase I needed the money to support the buyout.

mebu60

Relative newcomer to the forum but have lived your experience and am out the other side (minus 25% pension). 

Good luck in everything going forward, be sure to give the children permission to be happy when with their mother.

Took me about two years to get my mojo back. But been with current partner 13.5 years now despite telling her after three months that I would never marry again! (just in case that was a major dealbreaker for her). 

Albermarle

Alexland said:

masonic said:

Great to see you back. Many will look back on 2022 as a tough year, but that's next level. Glad there's light at the end of the tunnel.

Yeah was pretty tough as we continued to live together until she moved out a month ago and she made it pretty clear that I wasn't welcome in the house on the days and nights she was scheduled to look after the kids so I heavily used my swimming pool and cinema memberships. Stress, lack of hunger and exercise caused me to lose a few stone and am now within a healthy BMI range for the first time in a couple of decades. I was willing to try anything to make the marriage work but learned it is only possible if you both want it and she had already developed relationships elsewhere.
Anyway the ISA investments did their job and provided a safety net that has enabled us both to have enough money to have nice family houses supported by affordable mortgages. The ISAs also covered several months where outgoings exceeded income.
As there will be no pension sharing order then with modest growth my existing investments will already use most of the LTA at 55 so I am going to cut back on contributions in April and only pay enough to get employer matching plus any bonuses. As my wife has moved out then drawing the extra income from next tax year will be compatible with her claiming child benefit. I just added this tax year's LISA contribution too as I had been wavering incase I needed the money to support the buyout.

I was wondering why the sudden lack of posts. Usually it is because someone has been banned, but I could see this was not the case. It all sounds pretty awful but at least you could afford to get divorced, many couples are basically stuck together due to lack of finances. Although it has been a big hit financially, it sounds like you will not need to be going to the food bank at least, and you are also slimmer and fitter !

As we near the end of the tax year I expect to see lots of quick-fire technical ISA questions!

Yes and all of them answered many, many times before......

george4064

Good to have you back @Alexland and glad to see there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

homestraight

Glad to see you back and to hear you're doing well after such tough times. It does put things in perspective when going through something like this. 
Great to see your approach to it. 
Keep those kids front and centre as I'm sure you always have. 
It won't be the life you envisaged but it'll be different not worse. That's important

Audaxer

Hi @Alexland, good to see you back on the forum. I'm sorry to hear about the very difficult time you have had over the last year but glad you are getting things sorted out and recovering.  

Alexland

Audaxer said:

Hi @Alexland, good to see you back on the forum. I'm sorry to hear about the very difficult time you have had over the last year but glad you are getting things sorted out and recovering.  

Thanks guys and while my mind was completely elsewhere my mostly passive investments ticked along nicely without needing any particular monitoring or action on my part. If my strategy had required me to pick short term winners and switch when their performance started to fade then being distracted by life events could have been expensive. I do still need to write to HMRC and own up to not holding the VCT for the 5 years and return the tax refund - made a small loss on that but nothing much and Jarvis X-O were very good proactively calling me when there was a chance to sell it at a good price. I'll probably just stick to global trackers for now as they are in my comfort zone of being likely to have good long term returns if one can stomach the volatility.