Who to turn to

phynbarr

I divorced late in life and, regrettably, allowed my husband to manage out money.  That has left me with 2 problems: one that I only have a small amount of capital and two that I am owefully ignorant about investing.

My instinct is to turn to financial advisors but they take one look at my small amounts and basically say "nothing here for us"

So

What is the most effective way to become more savvy with time and money in short supply?  I did look at a financial Coach but she wanted £125 per hour and 2 hourly chats!

And are there any financial advisors suitable for someone in my position so I can make the best of what I've got?

Thank you

Flugelhorn

maybe first of all you need to be sure that the money is in accounts giving you the best interest returns and that you have some that is easily accessible 

eskbanker

phynbarr said:

I divorced late in life and, regrettably, allowed my husband to manage out money.  That has left me with 2 problems: one that I only have a small amount of capital and two that I am owefully ignorant about investing.

My instinct is to turn to financial advisors but they take one look at my small amounts and basically say "nothing here for us"

So

What is the most effective way to become more savvy with time and money in short supply?  I did look at a financial Coach but she wanted £125 per hour and 2 hourly chats!

And are there any financial advisors suitable for someone in my position so I can make the best of what I've got?

It's unlikely to be cost-effective to spend money on this, although you don't say what your 'small amounts' actually are - hopefully you had suitable assistance with the divorce settlement?

You could do a lot worse than sharing a summary of your finances on here and seeking guidance about what best to do, or there's plenty of reading material elsewhere on the site.  There's also a structured approach to follow at The Flowchart - UKPersonalFinance Wiki

HHarry

Have you tried Youtube?  ‘Damien talks money’ has some very easy to understand and sensible videos (on all sorts of subjects so you might have to have a sort through).

Obviously Youtube is full of random strangers with unknown qualifications, so don’t take everything as gospel, but there is some good basic stuff on there.

Expotter

Before turning to Youtube (hard to know who to trust), one good, safe place to start is on the Open University website, they have several free online introductory courses on managing investments, money in general and lots of other subjects. You just have to open an account and watch at your convenience. 

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses/full-catalogue

LHW99

One thing you could do is check your state pension forecast:

https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension

If you don't understand, ask on here, there are knowledgable people about.

Secondly, if you work (even part time) have you got an autoenrollment pension? If you don't earn much, so your company doesn't have to enrol you for that reason, you can still ask to be enrolled, and will earn tax relief, even if your employer won't put much (anything) in. If you do have one, make sure what you have is at least being put into the "default fund", rather than being left in cash.

Again, if you don't know what something means - ask here

dunstonh

My instinct is to turn to financial advisors but they take one look at my small amounts and basically say "nothing here for us"

Advisers have to consider value for money and if your amount is too small then you would end up paying fees that do more harm than good.

What is the most effective way to become more savvy with time and money in short supply?  I did look at a financial Coach but she wanted £125 per hour and 2 hourly chats!

Thats a similar cost to a regulated adviser as an hourly rate and realistically, you wouldn't get much coaching in two hours.  It would take that long to find things out about you.

And are there any financial advisors suitable for someone in my position so I can make the best of what I've got?

You haven't said what you have.   

friolento

phynbarr said:

one that I only have a small amount of capital and two that I am owefully ignorant about investing.

Can you sheare how old you are and approx how much your capital is? Are you a home owner or renter? Do you have dependents? What are your works pension provisions, how much state pension can you expect?

When you say "investing", do you actually mean "investing" or do you mean "saving", or both? What is your risk tolerance, how much of your capital could you lose without getting into a panic?

I appreciate a lot of this is personal information you might not wish to share in a forum where you may already be known to some. May be MSE would let you open a second account, just for the purposes of dicussing this matter?

phynbarr

Hi

I'll be 70 next year

I run my own business from home so I'm a homeowner with a mortgage, half of which will be paid off next year. I don't take anything from the business and continually reinvest to improve it

I have conglomeration of workplace pensions which give me an income of around £23K

And, having gone through various bits of paperwork, it looks like I have around £56K tied up in various pensions and ISAs

As I say, scrips and scraps all over the place and one ISA appears to be doing spectacularly badly

I just want to make the best of what I have and, to be honest, as I'm running my own business I don't want to spend a lot of time being "clever"