Investment & Investing

Would anyone be patient enough to explain the basics of Nutmeg to a massive financial novice?!

Nutmeg profile your attitude to risk and return and 'advise' appropriate funds in to which they allocate your money.

They do fixed allocation where they pick stuff then run it, and yearly they review your attitude and adjust things.

Or you can chose to have stuff actively managed where a real human evaluates performance and makes adjustments as things change.

Your actual 'purchases' via Nutmeg are held by a custodian bank.

NM offer ISA products, non ISA and a Pension. It's all the same 'stuff' but with different 'wrappers', i.e. ISA gives you tax free gains, LISA is the weird govt. ISA for gig economy workers, and the Pension gives you tax free gains and govt. top-ups but the normal pension rules apply.

Is it a sensible place to invest £1000?!

You could do worse. As above, they not the cheapest, medium and long term. They think people will pay their fee because they are easy to use and understand, and to an extent that's true.

Not investing the money for example will cost you whatever the rate of inflation is.

A good idea might be to Nutmeg stuff now, then 'skill up' over this year then make more optimal decisions next year. This is my referral link if you want to Nutmeg.