Best S&S ISA company?

[boyse7en]

I've got a bit over £6k in a cash ISA currently earning the square root of bugger all in interest.

Think i want to put it in a Stocks and Shares ISA or similar.
I'm not an active investor - just want to put it into a tracker fund of some sort.

Looking around, the costs of investing seem to vary between companies quite considerably. Are there any advantages to going with one of the pricier ones, or do i just get a HL account (0.45% charge, fund purchases and sales are free) and be done with it?

[boyse7en]

bhstewie said:

Apologies if I'm about to patronise you massively but as you mentioned a tracker by which I assume you mean 100% equities, I'd suggest take a look at what happened in 2008 and even more recently the end of 2018 etc.

Earning the square root of bugger all on £6K is unpleasant but make sure you're prepared for going in one day and finding there is £5K in there if the markets are taking a beating.

No need to apologise. I'm dangerously knowledgeable in terms of saving/investing - in other words i know a little bit but don't know what i don't know.

I'm not too worried about volatility as I just want to put the money in and basically forget about it. If look and it is worth £5k I'll just leave it a bit longer until it recovers.

[boyse7en]

Phooey said:

boyse7en said:

bhstewie said:

Apologies if I'm about to patronise you massively but as you mentioned a tracker by which I assume you mean 100% equities, I'd suggest take a look at what happened in 2008 and even more recently the end of 2018 etc.

Earning the square root of bugger all on £6K is unpleasant but make sure you're prepared for going in one day and finding there is £5K in there if the markets are taking a beating.

No need to apologise. I'm dangerously knowledgeable in terms of saving/investing - in other words i know a little bit but don't know what i don't know.

I'm not too worried about volatility as I just want to put the money in and basically forget about it. If look and it is worth £5k I'll just leave it a bit longer until it recovers.

You don't wait for it to recover, you add to it. Providing you've done a bit of research and put your £6k into a solid fund AND have a good (long) timespan then hopefully your £6k will take a beating and be worth £5k (or less!). Then what you do is reach into your pocket and add to it. Takes a strong mindset but a market crash can really make or break your investment/s. You don't understand how much I wish someone had told me this back in 2008 when I was blowing money on cars.. :roll eyes:

Phooey
(missed the 2008 boat. Waiting for the next one to come in..)

I'll stick more into it if I have any more spare!

Having kids has stopped any more savings (other than pension) over the past few years

[boyse7en]

JulianPH said:

Mr Pointy is quite correct about going direct to Vanguard rather than paying for the HL platform.

Please bear in mind though that there are dealing costs and Vanguard's own platform costs on top of the fund fee. However, the total costs are still only 0.4% to 0.45% compared to 0.7% to 0.75% with HL.

With regard the IM sticky at the top of the Finance Forum, there is an interesting table comparing the performance of Vanguard LS to IM Index (which costs 0.57%) on page 50.

I also agree with bhstewie that you may want to look at holding a mixture of shares and bonds when you first move from cash. Both Vanguard LS and IM Index offer this (along with other investment companies, of course).

I had a read through the IM sticky, and it has basically confused me even more. Saw the table and get the concept of diminishing risk with a higher proportion of funds and higher risk/potential returns with a larger proportion of stocks and shares, but now I'm confused about the difference. I thought funds were investments in stocks and shares, but on a wider spread of shares than a single investor could manage.
Looks interesting, but everyone on there seems to be earning six figs and have £100k investments and i'm not in that sort of scale by any means. I've got this £6k ISA and a couple of pensions and that's it in terms of my net worth (other than the house and my dashing good looks)

[boyse7en]

OK, another numpty question.

All these "platforms" such as iWeb and HL etc all have a price per trade.

So that is the price to buy an investment into a fund? and then there are the fund managers charges (a percentage of the holding) to pay each month on top?
Is there any ongoing charge for using the "platform" as well?

I'm not planning on doing a lot of trades. I'm not knowledgable to keep swapping from one fund into another so it would be based on nothing better than hunches or guesswork, neither of which sounds like a good structured way of investing. TBH I don't understand how even the professionals can keep track of the best funds to buy into at any particular time, there seem to be hundreds!

[boyse7en]

I finally bit the bullet (or pulled the trigger, in PH speak) and have transferred my Cash ISA into a Vanguard S&S ISA.

Now its asking me to decide what funds to invest into. As I don't really follow the financial world am i best to stick it all in a Vanguard 60 fund and let it do its thing? Or if thats not a good plan, what is?