bond ladder - now or later?

silvercar

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82097350#Comment_82097350

I only have gilts in my SW account, so there is no other charges other than the £5 to buy.

mrklaw

oh yeah I’ll need to make sure there is money for the platform fee.

QrizB

I only have gilts in my SW account

Your coupons are paid as cash, though? So you end up with a cash balance from them?

mrklaw

Bond ladder bought.

• I should have waited until tomorrow - the ladder tool doesn’t update prices at teh start of the day so they were friday close prices.
• some of my volumes therefore vary - and some had higher than expected cost even though I stated the cost, not sure why.
• Bit of ChatGPT to review the output prices and considering 2% interest it looks good. Every year maturity is £10k or slightly above - very tightly matches the desired result.

now to wait 2.5 years and try and ignore random emails from AJ bell as coupons start piling up in cash (and keep an eye on the free cash that is available for platform fees etc. only have £200 currently so that’ll only last a bit less than two years

DRS1

and some had higher than expected cost even though I stated the cost, not sure why.

Could that be because you excluded the dealing charges and then the total including dealing charges came to more than you had set as the value for the transaction?

Or did you say I want to spend X and they actually spent X+1. That doesn't sound right. You can get gilts to decimal places so they shouldn't be rounding anything up.

leosayer

Rather than ignoring those emails you could earn extra interest by sweeping the balance into a money market fund occasionally.

Not sure if it will make a material difference though.

mrklaw

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82098350#Comment_82098350

I’ve considered it, but AJ Bell pay something like 2.6% currently on cash. MMF like CSH2 might pay 3.8%? but then there is a £5 trading fee - I need it to be an ETF to keep within the platform fee cap so doing it regularly will likely not be worth it?

@DRS1 My only thinking was I used the same ‘cost’ that the tool provided but some prices will have changed since friday close to Monday open, so they bought a different number and that affected maturity value? But we’re talking £10007 instead of £10000 for most of it. The largest delta is £10135 but thats an outlier.

DRS1

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82098590#Comment_82098590

Ah I see what you mean. I thought they had tried to spend more of your money than you wanted. Obviously prices have moved in your favour so that is good.

Kryten_the_Titan

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82098350#Comment_82098350

I’ve considered it, but AJ Bell pay something like 2.6% currently on
cash. MMF like CSH2 might pay 3.8%? but then there is a £5 trading fee -
I need it to be an ETF to keep within the platform fee cap so doing it
regularly will likely not be worth it?

A regular investment plan with AJ Bell waivers the purchase fee of the fund. If you set a threshold of eg £100 a month to an ETF like CSH2, if you have enough cash to cover the purchase you buy up to your set threshold, otherwise no purchase is made - no fee either way. You can turn it on and off whenever you wish.

Find the fund and click the REGULAR blue button. Only problem with CHS2 is it costs £124,680 per share and unfortunately AJ Bell do not do fractional ETFs. No problem with an OEIC though, as long as you're OK paying the additional platform fee (over the £10 for gilts/ETFs) but for £1000 in a STMMF OEIC that comes to £0.21 a month.

The day of the month for an AJ Bell regular investment plan is the 10th.

Over 2.5 years the extra 1.2% might buy you an extra pub lunch, or two.

mrklaw

interesting I saw their regular saver but assumed it was more a direct debit kind of thing. an ‘interesting’ way of administering it but could be useful.

£1250 per unit!? damn need a new plan then. or just leave the loose change in cash.. Different ETF - if I pick OEIC all my ETFs still sit under the cap right, doesn’t start charging a % on all assets?