Investment & Investing

Just £50 for me.

I requested a withdrawal a few days ago and checked the “withdraw after next draw” box. They have taken this to mean “withdraw after May draw” so now I have to spend ages on the phone to get that changed

Still about 1 year to go on this one but fairly sure right now you’d be happy

Did you include Nvidia though? If you did, you’d be ecstatic.

Has anyone used shawbrook ? They have a 5% fixed rate bond available for 1 year.

Yep, had accounts with them in the past and had no issues.

Me too

Well sure but I still wouldn't say it's low risk. Picking individual stocks is always gonna be high risk.

I mean 4 out of the magnificent 7 is hardly picking individual stocks but yeah you are right.

I am too heavily weighted in lifestrategy 100, but it has been sound for me so far. What is your process for picking alternatives? Lifestrategy is also a bit more expensive than others I think, but still way cheap.
The only diversification I have done is chuck some in S&P and the sustainable life 80-90% acca fund. Didn't do much DD. Not significant investments though so I am a bit laissez faire with it.

There are plenty of online calculators which let you input: a) initial amount, b) monthly deposit, c) interest rate and will give you d) final amount after 12 months.

How would you calculate c from a,b,d?

Best I've managed is trial and error, changing the rate until it matches the required result but am sure there must be a more accurate method. Given the numbers involved I'd probably get a reasonably correct result by considering the deposit as one lump rather than monthly which makes the maths easy, it's more out of curiosity than anything.

I use goal seek function in excel for this.

Cheers, I'll have to Google that. Assuming there's similar in Sheets.

To add some relevance to the topic, my St James's Place bloke emailed yesterday to arrange an annual review. Last year he was suggesting I transfer at least some of my work (Scottish Widows) pension to SJP. As far as I can work out the latter hasn't performed any better over the last year but it would be good to confirm that in advance.

Won £100 in PBs this month. Hoorah.

It would be surprising if they were better - certainly after charges - but the guy has to earn a living somehow!

T212 ISA doing 5.2% interest rate - am using it for this tax year :-)

Woo. I got £50 this month and MiniGB got £125.

The final amount, d, is:

d = a * (1 + c) + \sum_{i=0}^{11} (b*(1  + (12 - i) * c / 12))

Rearranging the sum, we note

d = a*(1 + c) +  12 * b  + b * c/12 * \sum_{i=1}^{12} i
    --------    --------   ----------------------------
    initial+    monthly     Interest on monthly deposits
    interest    deposit

Note the sum can be evaluated by Gauss' trick and is 13 * 12 / 2, so we simplify to

d = a * (1 + c) + 12 * b + b * 13/2 c
<=>
d - a - 12*b = c*(a + b * 13/2)
<=>
c = (d - a - 12*b) / (a + b * 13/2)

edit: the m-month case was wrong, removed.

Blimey, that's a bit more involved than I was expecting! Will try plugging the numbers in tomorrow, thanks.

If I'm a bit short on actual cash for some home improvement project but have the choice between taking some money out of my S&S ISA vs a home improvement loan (At around 6% for 24mo), what's the best way to decide on how to go about it? 70% of the project will be financed with cash.

how much? max out a couple of credit cards with 0% apr for 24 months?

About £15-20k. I've reduced my on-going investments for the foreseeable so more of my income becomes disposable rather than tied to my S&S ISA but it will take a while to make up that amount.

Timing is quite important as my partner is on maternity and I think that makes it easier for us to go away from the house when the bulk of the work happens.

If you already know about flexible ISAs then you'll know this already, but you can basically get the £20k allowance but borrow the cash out when you need it.

That is likely to be the best way, but it depends on your provider being flexible. You may need to switch, and I'm not sure if doing so makes past years flexible retrospectively. It may do, though.

See this about flex isa and offset mortgage:
https://monevator.com/should-you-borrow-to-fill-your-isa-each-year/#comments

Thanks @apc and @frank9755, taking a look at both 0% credit cards which seem to be 20 months max (which would be enough) and flexible ISA

Would you be better adding it to your mortgage? That way you get to keep your savings in your ISA in case you need some rainy day money. Stick the mortgage on a 2 year or 5 year fix and when you get to the end of the fixed term if you find you’ve then got the spare cash you can pay a chunk off when you arrange the new mortgage deal. This has always been important peace of mind to me but has helped me pay down my mortgage quickly while keeping a bit of emergency cash in the bank.

FYI

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aft.com+How+deep+are+the+problems+at+St+James%E2%80%99s+Place%3F&oq=site%3Aft.com+How+deep+are+the+problems+at+St+James%E2%80%99s+Place%3F&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIGCAEQRRg60gEIMjAyNmowajGoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8