Investment & Investing

Cheers and @hazzelfrazzel

This is a card for places that don't take Amex. The Amazon one seemed to be the most tempting when I was searching too.

WTF is wrong with Vanguard? Couple of years ago the debit card payments stopped working for me
so I switched to the direct debit method and now I checked the account and there is a payment pending from the 13th of September. No info on the Vanguard website why it's pending and
no request showing up on my HSBC account.
It's the same problem like with the debit card where it didn't trigger anything and when I raised the issue both sides couldn't do anything.

I know with freetrade it takes ages for the DD to clear into account whereas a direct transfer is pretty much instant.

I give it a few more days but it looks a lot slower to me than before.

Anyone here in the USS pension scheme? Trying to weigh up whether my wife should pay more into the DC part or into a SIPP. No additional contributions from the employer.

It's not a collective DC IIRC, and I wouldn't trust the USS leadership to manage their way out of a paper bag, so I would go SIPP.

Is a collective DC a thing? My understanding is that it is basically a sipp, but with limited fund options and no fees. But I can only assume/suspect that the ‘no fees’ is actually just the fees being hidden in another way.

Hard to compare a closed USS fund with the usual low cost trackers using Morningstar etc.

Salary sacrifice is obviously a benefit compared to post tax contributions and a self assessment. But from what I can work out the NI saving is minimal and I’m already a Ltd Company doing my own tax returns so one more for my wife is not a deal breaker.

£250 on PBs.

£0 :(

Is anybody using Trading 212 ?

After going down a youtube rabbit hole I'm not throwing pocket change at Vanguard funds.

Last night I wanted to buy £20 in a Vanguard S&P 500 fund. I now have £20 in the fund but the transaction cost me £22

does anybody know why that would be ? my understanding was it was all commission free.

Stamp duty?

It wasn't the ETF, because that's trading at about eighty quid, and you can't buy fractional shares.

The US Equity Index Fund (VUSEIDA) is an OEIC, and claims to have no entry/exit fees. The minimum 1-off payment is listed as £500, but I think that's waived if you're doing it through a Vanguard ISA.

Do you know exactly what you bought?

Is anybody using Trading 212 ?

Yes - was your Vanguard trade on there?

I've just looked at it will let me buy a fractional share, says it's commission free and the total cost will be £20. But note the note at the bottom...

That seems to be about pricing though. Without doing the actual trade (which I don't want to do as I'm a seller of equities rn) I can't see any reason why it should cost £22 and would be as surprised as you are if it did!

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I don't understand half of what you've just written, I'm the very definition of dumb money.

In the App it just call "Vanguard S&P 500 (Dist)" its currently trading at £82.2548

I was hoping to just invest in an S&P 500 index fund, I've already fucked that up by buying into a world fund by mistake.

I should just go and buy some Game Stop and hope for the best..

yeah that's exactly it. strange.

Vanguard S&P 500 (Dist)

that should be what you're expecting. I.e. it's their S&P 500 ETF and it distributes dividends (i.e. gives you the money) rather than reinvests (automatically buys more of the fund with the dividend)

You probably do want the one that reinvests - search for VUAG or Vanguard S&P 500 (Acc)

I should just go and buy some Game Stop and hope for the best..

Yeah, lets bring this thread back to the good old days.

I'm surprised Trading212 would over-charge: I suppose it does say "Market Buy", but I wouldn't expect a retail app to use market orders for exactly this reason.

It's figured out what fraction it expects £20 to get you, and then just asked the market for that quantity irrespective of cost. I think the only time I've used market orders as a retail customer is FX, and you have to confirm the trade after you know the price.

I don't suppose you can just change the order type to limit?

It is from memory a legal and general provided scheme, so on some level the fee free is genuine compared to if you had a legal and general sipp you set up yourself. I used it for convenience to top up beyond the uss dB scheme and have actually had decent enough returns on some of the admittedly limited fund selections to continue to keep it open having left the job/uss scheme.

So you think he just bought more at the same price? But that implies the price jumped by 10% between quotation and execution. Markets have been a bit volatile lately but not that much!

But I guess, with small numbers it could get a bit lumpy, so could be right.

I thought what he was saying was he got hit with an unexpected £2 charge, but buying £2 more than you wanted at the same price doesn't sound so bad.

Who are people using as SIPP providers?

I recently met with an IFA who has now come back with their recommendation to move my current pension pot into a SIPP with abrdn wrap. Luckily I decided to give them a Google, and the trustpilot reviews are horrendous. There's people complaining that the app is slow and difficult to use.

Obviously I'll go back and politely ask if we could go with a different provider. I'm just wondering if there's a consensus on who the "best" provider is, or if there's a good few who are similar and it's about personal preference.

Depends on how much you have in pot and what you want to invest in.

Use the tables in here: https://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

Then review the SIPP rows and see comments in far right column. This will tell you best SIPP for your situation

Vanguard offer a SIPP wrapper
As do AJ Bell, and many others:

https://www.thetimes.com/money-mentor/pensions-retirement/private-pension/best-self-invested-personal-pension-sipp

The wrapper is the wrapper, worry about security mechanisms and the charges. If you care about the reviews of the app, then fair enough but ask yourself if you actually need an app?

Ask the IFA why they recommended 'abrdn' and whether there is any commission from abrdn to the IFA.

I recently transferred my SIPP from Vanguard to ii as it was getting to the point that the % rate they charge was not the cheapest for me anymore.

I got a referral code off someone one here which bagged them £200 and me a year of no fees. After that fees are some of the cheapest for a SIPP but it all depends on how much you have.

I also benefitted from cash back for transferring my SIPP. 50k-200k transfer will get you £250 for example. Transfer was really fast and smooth, but it does depend on who you are transferring out of. They are running the same cashback offer till the end of Oct, but it appears to be like a DFS sale that keeps popping up, so may be worth waiting to sign up and start the transfer.

If you go down this route, let me know and I can give you a referral code for a years no fees (and I get £200 as well which is obviously nice)

As Arvy said, I would be asking/questioning why your IFA is suggesting Abrdn. They don't pop up on any best buy tables and from what I can see they charge 0.30% on SIPPS up to £250K vs 0.15% charged by Vanguard (capped at £375).

For what it's worth, I was very happy with Vanguard but for my SIPP balance, ii will be almost half the price per year- £156 (and fixed as my investments grow).