Investing small amounts?

Onestepcloser

I have some extra money left over from our own personal money.  I've set up a SIPP with vanguard for £25 pm. My pension isn't great with my employer so this is to boost that.

I've another £25 pm I would like to invest in an ISA, was considering AJ Bell but at £1.50 per trade as well as platform fees it's too expensive.

After July I can double these to £50 pm each, what are the best options for investing such low amounts?

ColdIron

For very low sums and frequent trading any transaction fees will kill you. Vanguard with £0 to trade and a lower percentage platform fee, would seem to be an obvious choice

masonic

InvestEngine might be an option.

El_Torro

One thing you could do is increase the amount you are putting in to your workplace pension. Your employer might not increase their contribution as a result but there's still a benefit in doing it, especially if you pay into your workplace pension via salary sacrifice. 

brucefan_2

Onestepcloser said:

I have some extra money left over from our own personal money.  I've set up a SIPP with vanguard for £25 pm. My pension isn't great with my employer so this is to boost that.

I've another £25 pm I would like to invest in an ISA, was considering AJ Bell but at £1.50 per trade as well as platform fees it's too expensive.

After July I can double these to £50 pm each, what are the best options for investing such low amounts?

THis might be worth a look. Fee-free regular investing from as little as £25 per month.

https://www.ii.co.uk/investing-with-ii/regular-investing#how

ColdIron

But ii charge a flat fee of £4.99 per month so £59.88 pa. Much more than AJB at £18.37 or vanguard at £0.22 pence

wmb194

Onestepcloser said:

I have some extra money left over from our own personal money.  I've set up a SIPP with vanguard for £25 pm. My pension isn't great with my employer so this is to boost that.

I've another £25 pm I would like to invest in an ISA, was considering AJ Bell but at £1.50 per trade as well as platform fees it's too expensive.

After July I can double these to £50 pm each, what are the best options for investing such low amounts?

Have a look at InvestEngine and Trading212. No commissions or account fees, they offer fractional shares which means you can invest every penny and T212 has a 1% cashback offer on its Isa for the 24/25 tax year.

https://www.trading212.com/isa

Aminatidi

I think I'd just stick with Vanguard tbh.

Free dealing and respectfully the amounts are small enough not to care about the platform fee for the moment.

Onestepcloser

El_Torro said:

One thing you could do is increase the amount you are putting in to your workplace pension. Your employer might not increase their contribution as a result but there's still a benefit in doing it, especially if you pay into your workplace pension via salary sacrifice. 

There isn't an option for salary sacrifice as far as I'm aware.  The company I work for really aren't all that pleasant to deal with, bad enough working for them without asking for them to do anything on my behalf.

Onestepcloser

Invest engine looks good at least for the ISA, zero fees.

Trading 212, what's the deal with this, no fees? How do they make money?

wmb194

Onestepcloser said:

Invest engine looks good at least for the ISA, zero fees.

Trading 212, what's the deal with this, no fees? How do they make money?

It has a CFD operation where it makes good money - you can find its annual report on Companies House. Don't touch CFDs! They're a great way to gamble your money away. It also appears to do some market making so might make something here.

Currently its plan seems to be to build up the brokerage side by offering everything for free and then at some point in the future introduce some kind of 'freemium' model, probably similar to Freetrade's, where e.g., the basic service and a core set of investments are free but then you pay a subscription to access other investments.

Two other low cost ones are Freetrade and CMC Invest. Like T212, CMC makes its money on CFDs and is looking to expand its brokerage business. CMC is a FTSE250 company that's been around for decades.