Investment & Investing

As an example, if you look at a graduate accountancy position your wage after three years is likely to be 80%+ higher than your starting wage.
@bananaskid

Also I think the lifetime ISA and help to buy ISAs are different.

This is my understanding too.

My 2p the idea of trusting the government on something as long term as the lifetime ISA is niave. And over the term the gain seems minor.

The Help to Buy ISA doesn't alwsy work out when you look at the inside/near London caps and that it's priced into a lot of new builds (which I believe is still a stipulation). However, there is so little downside, if you can you may as well. If it works for you great, if it doesn't meh.

@hugo7 From my research, I think with the help to buy isa, if you don't use it on a house, you still get the interest when you cash out tax free, just not the gov's contribution of 25%. I also think the scheme ends in like November so I should really get into one, even just with £100 to start, ASAP.
The stipulations are limiting indeed

Bad day for Sainsbury's share price. I have some Sainsbury's shares, but I'm sure it'll bounce back. I don't know why people ever thought the 2nd and 3rd largest players in a 5ish player industry would be allowed to merge..

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It’s worth noting with LISAs, you get your 25% government bonus up front, so if you pay £4000 in you get £1000 bonus up front (which is the max for a single tax year).

This is great if you intend to buy a house in the near-mid term but should your plans change and you need to withdraw that cash you are penalised 25% of the balance, so for example, if you paid in £4000, got the £1000 bonus then decided to pull out you would only receive £3750, you’d pay a £250 penalty in effect.

This is obviously not an issue with help to buy as there’s no penalty but you don’t ecru the bonus as quickly.

Also I'm pretty sure that the lifetime ISA has a 25% charge for withdrawing early.

I’d say that is a really good move. I had some spare money in my first year but I decided to be stupid and spend it away. I’d look at the Lifetime ISA. It seems it’s a lot easier to use and has a much higher limit (£4k). I’m using Nutmeg at the moment.

Also, I’d probably not put it all into one of these ISAs as it’s a pretty illiquid asset and try to keep some aside for rainy day(s).

We switched from help to buy ISA to LISA last year (there was a government incentive to do so) but in hindsight I wish we hadn’t bothered

it would have been better to have the flexibility as our situation has changed and it will end up costing me £625 to liberate the money in there if I need to

@andyfallsoff @aggi I was just trying to be fairly conservative in my estimation although the number I used in my calculation was 7%. Do either of you have any good sources for longer-term salary expectations?

It's definitely worth doing, because as you said either way you have the money in an isa, earning whatever its earning.

People have done a good job of explaining the limitations of LISAs.

Sadly the government has done an incredible job of confusing people with regards to isa's. Especially if they are hard up and need flexibility.
However if your rich you can put 20k into an isa and also an additional 1k kick back on your 4k lisa.
It's unbelievable.. rant over.
I won't even get started on pensions capital gains and inheritance tax.

"And use Vanguard not Nutmeg."

is this purely because of the fees part of the equation? or are they better performance? I could probably UTFS on that right?

However with a LISA it has to be open for a year before you can buy the house. With Help to buy it's pretty much useable right away

Imo Vanguard is good if you want to invest in Vanguard funds

Nutmeg is simple and good for basic model portfolios

For whole of market Hargreaves Lansdowne is worth checking out as a platform.

From my looking H&L are the most spendy option but super sexy and interactive investor is hands-off but cheaper for much of this stuff. I think that's the conclusion we came to when I was looking at pension funds a while back.

took the opportunity to buy some Centrica shares today on the back of the fall in SP from the News article regarding gas supplies to New builds. Can't complain about the Dividends.

This is betting not investing ;)

Isn't all investing beyond a cash isa and some premium bonds

It's all betting, as there is always some risk even if income is fixed (even the US government could default on its bonds) but 'investment' is generally seen as the low end of the risk spectrum, speculation at the other.

HL fees are a lot too much
Nutmeg fees are too much
Vanguard fees are fine and they work great

They have the lowest fees but offer funds from one firm, themselves. If you only want to invest in Vanguard products thats fine and go Vanguard, however if you want anything else you have to look at other platforms.

You can't access rest of market or single line stock so it is very limiting

If you use ii/interactive investor you get low fees and you get to invest in Vanguard and most of the other things out there. Nutmeg was super simple but I figured with a little more time on my part reading I could save myself coin in the long run.

Question - Last week I became an uncle, rather than buy some baby grows from Jojo-mama-whatever I'd like to pop a few hundred into an index tracker for them to enjoy after 18 years of low fees and compounded gains (hopefully) .

A JISA looks like the way to go, but I would have to get my brother to open it. Can anyone suggest an alternative?

We did this - JISA's through Hargreaves Lansdown are free to run, and they have a good range of low cost indices (HSBC global is 0.07% iirc)

Also, there are often children's regular savers accounts around that offer very good interest rates for a few years. May be worth one of those, and chuck the balance into a JISA when the introductory rates end.

And make them a few easily prepared meals. That'll go down well too.

That's a cool idea. Wish one of my rellos thought of that for me. Doh!