Should I leave IFA and where to go

Lookingforanswer

@older_and_no_wiser Will check those out, much appreciated.

Lookingforanswer

@Marcon All the IFAs I researched initially seemed to have an up-front fee but it's worth knowing that there are other possibilities (and maybe this is unusual) so maybe I'll look a bit more extensively next time. Thanks.

dunstonh

@dunstonh The three month comment was a response to your comment about investments not continuing to go down.

Investments zig zag.    "continuing to go down" would suggest that from the peak of December 2021, your investment has continued to go down from that point.   Whereas in reality, your value has likely followed the pattern of zig zagging downwards in 2022 to a low in October but then since zig zagged upwards to where it is today.  Still lower than 2021 but getting closer.

The investments are not primarily in gilts.  Do you know what a reasonable return over the last 5 years would be for investments which are not gilts or where I can look for this information? Or is it simple a case of using the Financial indices as a reference?

The areas that have fallen heavier over late 2021 to 2022 are gilts, treasury stocks and corporate bonds (pretty much all fixed interest securities), Technology stocks and emerging markets.   More recently Asia has been falling back.



And here is five years

Lookingforanswer

@dunstonh Will have a closer look at those graphs. There is lots of good information in these. 

Also there is a lot of great iinformation in what everyone has posted. There is plenty for me to go away and look into further and I'm more confident that I might be able to decide a way ahead. So really a big thank you for all this help from everyone posting. I'll find some time to look at it all properly.