Tidying up my Finances - Advice Welcome

newbieni

Hi All,

Below is my financial setup and I wanted some advice on the setup, with the hope of making my money work as best as possible.

I am 40 with two kids (4 and 2) my salary is £41k p/a. I own my own house worth £135k. I am hoping to buy a new house (bigger to suit the family) with my wife soon valued at approximately £270k and I am going to use the sale from my house to pay for my half. My wife has already sold her house just after we got married. 

I use an Amex card to buy items for the cashback feature (1%) and I have a pension pot of around £97k, I pay in 9% and my employer pays in 11.5%.

tacpot12

I would suggest that anything that is not in an ISA and not needed day to day should be put into your pension or the mortgage. If your wife is working, then putting something into her pension, if she is not working, pay into the mortgage. Once the mortgage is paid off, you can focus on maxing out your pensions and ISAs. 

Bigwheels1111

Ditch Chip easy access and ISA.

Switch to Trading212, easy access ISA 5.17% as of today

That's what I've done for now.

Plus I have 17 regular savers will be 19 at the end of the month, 10% to 5.5%.

dunstonh

We don't know spending plans, but going by your list, you are heavy in short term money, light in medium term and nothing in long term.

I'm guessing the short term money is linked to the house.  However, it would help you segmented what you think the spending needs are for the amounts as your plans should dictate what you should be doing.   Knowing the solutions without the plans makes it difficult to say.

VLS100 is a weak point but its only a small value.  So, not a big deal.    Unless you have a particular reason for preferring a global managed fund with underlying passives instead of a global tracker.

Albermarle

As above you are very heavily weighted to cash.
Now at this moment that is not too bad as interest rates are above inflation.
However over the long term investments should do better.
Work out how much cash you need over the next 5 years and if you have a surplus from that then think about adding more to your S&S ISA, or pension, or paying off some of your mortgage. Or a bit of all three.

newbieni

dunstonh said:

We don't know spending plans, but going by your list, you are heavy in short term money, light in medium term and nothing in long term.

I'm guessing the short term money is linked to the house.  However, it would help you segmented what you think the spending needs are for the amounts as your plans should dictate what you should be doing.   Knowing the solutions without the plans makes it difficult to say.

VLS100 is a weak point but its only a small value.  So, not a big deal.    Unless you have a particular reason for preferring a global managed fund with underlying passives instead of a global tracker.

Is there a better option available in Vanguard? I thought this option was good as returns have been around 40%.

eskbanker

newbieni said:

dunstonh said:

VLS100 is a weak point but its only a small value.  So, not a big deal.    Unless you have a particular reason for preferring a global managed fund with underlying passives instead of a global tracker.

Is there a better option available in Vanguard? I thought this option was good as returns have been around 40%.

Their FTSE Global All Cap is an obvious alternative to VLS100, as a genuine index tracker without the management decisions and the high UK weighting, but we don't know what your rationale was for choosing the LifeStrategy one?

masonic

newbieni said:

dunstonh said:

We don't know spending plans, but going by your list, you are heavy in short term money, light in medium term and nothing in long term.

I'm guessing the short term money is linked to the house.  However, it would help you segmented what you think the spending needs are for the amounts as your plans should dictate what you should be doing.   Knowing the solutions without the plans makes it difficult to say.

VLS100 is a weak point but its only a small value.  So, not a big deal.    Unless you have a particular reason for preferring a global managed fund with underlying passives instead of a global tracker.

Is there a better option available in Vanguard? I thought this option was good as returns have been around 40%.

Vanguard FTSE Global All-cap would arguably be the best 100% equities option within Vanguard's range. No UK bias, and includes some smaller companies. There are cheaper ways with multiple funds, but this is a good all-in-one option.

ThePirates

What's the best/cheapest way of investing in Vanguard FTSE Global All-cap?

eskbanker

ThePirates said:

What's the best/cheapest way of investing in Vanguard FTSE Global All-cap?

Pretty much any platform will offer a mainstream product like that, so you'd just need to compare costs based on your purchasing and holding profile - for example, Vanguard's own platform will charge 0.15% annually but no purchase cost, whereas IWeb has no annual charge but a dealing cost of £5.  Plenty of other options are also available, some with regular investing plans that offer a slightly different pricing model....

https://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

And of course, cheapest doesn't necessarily mean best, so whatever you mean by 'best' may involve a different comparison!

fourmarks

newbieni said:

Hi All,

Below is my financial setup and I wanted some advice on the setup, with the hope of making my money work as best as possible.

I am 40 with two kids (4 and 2) my salary is £41k p/a. I own my own house worth £135k. I am hoping to buy a new house (bigger to suit the family) with my wife soon valued at approximately £270k and I am going to use the sale from my house to pay for my half. My wife has already sold her house just after we got married. 

I use an Amex card to buy items for the cashback feature (1%) and I have a pension pot of around £97k, I pay in 9% and my employer pays in 11.5%.

I would cash her in and put the proceeds into your pension pot.