Investing For The Future
I’m a 57 year old man, and I’ve come quite late to the investing game. I’ve never been great a saving — money always seemed to burn a hole in my pocket!
Don’t get me wrong, I put some away, but not nearly enough, and not really in the right places.
I do have a pension, which is being contributed via my payroll and my employer, along with the occasional top up; but it won’t last long if I want to maintain a particular lifestyle!
Stocks and Shares
A year ago I decided to start a Stocks ISA, and have been putting in £100 per month; and where possible, a little bit more.
The benefit of a Stocks ISA (if you don’t know) is that you can invest up to £20,000 per tax year completely tax free.
I’ve watched videos and read online about the best things to do, and over the course of the year, my investment grew to just short of £2500.
However, I was in the wrong place. I’m not saying that I was badly informed or advised; however, I was using AJ Bell as my platform to invest and this is not cost effective.
AJ Bell charge £1.50 for each investment and since I was adding £100+ each month, this starts to add up.
It’s not really suitable for someone who is consistently and constantly adding to the fund.
Trading 212
First — this is not an endorsement of Trading 212.
I came to a decision, having seen countless videos, and reading about using platforms like Trading 212.
It’s free to use, but there are occasional charges depending your selected investments. There’s usually no commission to pay, just the foreign exchange fee and maybe, stamp duty — BUT we’re talking about pence, not pounds.
Nothing is really for free, but it makes sense with the constant investments.
I withdrew my AJ Bell funds and got to work on building ‘pies’ on Trading212.
I have set up the same auto-invest that I did with AJ Bell, this time spreading the investing over the month — they call this Dollar Cost Averaging. I’ve read a lot about “time in the market is better than timing the market”, which to be honest, I don’t have time to work out what’s going to happen, so spread the love and see what happens.
Portfolio
I’ll save my portfolio plan for another post.
I know this is the long game, and I realise that whilst I may not reap the big numbers versus if I had I started 20 years ago; at least there may be something to supplement my pension, when I retire.
More importantly, I have been stressing to my own children the importance of investing, and my youngest, who is almost 20 (and also doesn’t save very well) has seen this as a ‘game’.
He is still at university, and without a regular income, but he does plenty of baby-sitting and he is going to invest those earnings.
Whilst I started with a Stocks ISA a year ago, I feel like this re-start has given me a fresh boost and impetus to focus more closely on what is going on.
I will be writing about my progress, good and bad, so please follow me and subscribe to receive emails when a new story is published.
Do you invest? Are you considering investing? Let me know your thoughts. Am I too late?
Remember — the value of shares can go down as well as up, and there is a risk of losing all investments.
Originally posted on Medium