Best S&S ISA company?

Best S&S ISA company?

Author
Discussion

chip*

1,018 posts

228 months

Friday 21st February 2020
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I assume you are looking at the Lifestrategy funds.

To keep it simple, your fund choice is driven by your both your risk appetite and investment duration (see below for a simplified illustration from Vanguard).





Link to the above screen shots for more details on the LS funds: https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investing-expla...

To summarise, if you are risk adverse with plans to access the cash in the next 3-5 years, you are looking at the end with LS 20 & 40, but if you have a higher risk appetite i.e. you can sleep peacefully at night if your investment drops overnight by say 10%-15% and this can be more!, and you are investing for the long term e.g. your pension, uni fee for your kids in 15 years time etc..,then you are looking at the end with LS 60, 80 & 100.

Imo, Vanguard website is one of the better websites around, and I recommend investing some time to read the "Investing Education" section which was created specifically for DIY investor like yourself.


VR99

1,263 posts

63 months

Friday 21st February 2020
quotequote all
I've used HL previously, good website and bells and whistles so you pay for it in the fees..can't argue with that.
I now use Vanguard, it's cheapest for the vanguard tracker I invest in and a simple website, no faffin about fire and forget and easy to quickly login and check etc
I use a VLS 100..probably should be using a 60 for my risk tolerance but for now not too fussed about changing.

Brave Fart

5,727 posts

111 months

Friday 21st February 2020
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If it's any help, I have recently transferred both mine and Mrs BF's cash ISA's into Vanguard S&S ISA's. Cash earns next to nothing these days, and our pension funds are fully funded. I chose L&S funds for both of us, purely on the basis of (low) cost. LS100 and LS80 were the chosen vehicles.

Jon39

12,827 posts

143 months

Sunday 23rd February 2020
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I know of one S&S ISA provider which charges zero fees over £10,000. Very probably it is no longer available to new customers.

Does anyone know of offers of free fees, or with reasonably low fee caps?

Some providers do not have any fee caps, which means they are really imposing a tax and not charging fees. Their work does not increase, just because their clients funds happen to become more valuable.


bitchstewie

51,214 posts

210 months

Sunday 23rd February 2020
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Jon39 said:

I know of one S&S ISA provider which charges zero fees over £10,000. Very probably it is no longer available to new customers.

Does anyone know of offers of free fees, or with reasonably low fee caps?

Some providers do not have any fee caps, which means they are really imposing a tax and not charging fees. Their work does not increase just because their clients funds happen to become more valuable.
It really depends what you're holding.

I have six figures with HL and pay £45/year capped on most of it as it's investment trusts.

Funds with HL are pricey though whilst with Vanguard and others they have lower platform fees but you pay them on everything.

There are calculators online that will aim to compare platform charges if you tell them what mix of funds and trusts/shares/etfs you hold.

T6 vanman

3,067 posts

99 months

Sunday 23rd February 2020
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Someone completely green and new to this method of investments,
As someone who will come into a healthy 5 figure sum next year, I'm interested in making this money grow for maybe 8~15 years with no requirement for the capital,
I (think I) understand I cannot invest eg £55,000 over one year but need to do this over three years due to input limits .. Correct?
Although I'd like to put half into something more solid ..eg Vanguard 60/40, can platforms like vanguard let you buy eg £5000 in gold or shares eg WHSmiths or RBS directly?

bitchstewie

51,214 posts

210 months

Sunday 23rd February 2020
quotequote all
T6 vanman said:
Someone completely green and new to this method of investments,
As someone who will come into a healthy 5 figure sum next year, I'm interested in making this money grow for maybe 8~15 years with no requirement for the capital,
I (think I) understand I cannot invest eg £55,000 over one year but need to do this over three years due to input limits .. Correct?
Although I'd like to put half into something more solid ..eg Vanguard 60/40, can platforms like vanguard let you buy eg £5000 in gold or shares eg WHSmiths or RBS directly?
You can invest outside of an ISA but I'll let others get into the tax implications.

If you invest using Vanguard's platform then you're quite right things like gold or stocks or any non-Vanguard investment aren't available to you.

It comes back to my point above that different platforms work really well or really badly for different situations smile