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I'm in my mid 30s and have north of 50k sat in random accounts doing not much more than being a far too big 'emergency fund' and so planning to do something with it. I'm a teacher so pretty sure I can't increase work pension contributions. I have no plans to buy a house. Only debt I have is 20k type 2 student loans, currently at ~2.6%. The flowchart seems to suggest 3 things... 1. £4k into S&S LISA which would be used as a pension contribution basically to get the £1000 bonus from the government. I've got ~10k in a LISA with AJBell at the moment. 2. Setting up a SIPP, probably with Vanguard. 3. A S&S ISA, maybe also with Vanguard just due to low fees. Given I'm trying to squirrel the money away, one idea that came to mind is to hit my SIPP & ISA caps for the year. I'd still have a very sizeable emergency fund left over. I'd appreciate any thoughts on this approximate idea before I embark. I've looked at the flowchart, read this thread, looked on monevator so have some general idea but very willing to accept that I've many misconceptions too. Theophany posted:^^ all very good points, the only thing I would stress is that unless you're investing your pension into property of something wild like direct shares or a property development, a SIPP is bad value for money 90% of the time. A Personal Pension* affords you all of the same benefits for less of the costs if all you're doing is investing in collectives investments (ie Unit Trusts and OEICs). You mentioned SIPPs being bad value for money 90% of the time twice in the thread and I'm a bit confused. Given the flowchart mentions getting a SIPP, what am I missing from what you're saying?
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Jun 6, 2020 23:20
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:You seem to be heading along the right path. I'm new to teaching and so am purely on the new scheme, which makes it marginally less confusing. To respond to this I read through the Teachers Pension website, so thanks for that push, and now know I need to read more into Faster Accrual & Additional Payment. Faster Accrual seems like a no-brainer, but have to apply before the financial year. First year teacher salary is just over £24,000. I thought a SIPP would mean I could pay £19,200 in and tax relief would bump that up to £24,000. That is £4,800 'free' that I'd not have with an ISA. I'd pay tax on that later, but I thought the benefit being would be the 25% tax-free lump sum and that although taxed later on retirement it would probably be at a lower rate of tax. It also gives me an opportunity to invest £40,000 this financial year as opposed to just the £20,000 ISA cap. In terms of where, Vanguard seems to be 0.43% (0.15% platform + 0.24% for the fund + 0.04% transaction fees) for the SIPP. Good point about access to the ISA. My thinking is putting it into something along the lines of the Vanguard Lifestrategy 80/Retirement 2050. Splitting this chunk of cash 50/50 over a few years between the SIPP/ISA would also mean that not too much is locked up. https://monevator.com/how-pensions-will-help-you-reach-financial-independence-quicker-than-isas-alone also seems to suggest SIPP being better than ISA later on. Alchenar posted:You can buy more than £20k, the extra will just sit in a standard Stocks and Shares account and next tax year you can transfer it into the ISA. You won't even pay any tax on it, you won't hit the thresholds on dividend or capital gains tax in that year unless stonks really go up. Thanks for that. I didn't know that that was possible. Sad Panda fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Jun 7, 2020 |
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Jun 7, 2020 13:49
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Theophany posted:HL are pieces of poo poo in the same vein as St James Place. Ignore their utterly terrible buy lists if you do use them, though. What's the issue with St James Place? I have family that use them. My main issue with that is they're paying way too much for advice breaking the fundamental rule of passive investing.
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Jun 7, 2020 23:54
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ed balls balls man posted:Is anyone here doing matched betting? Have seen it around on various finance blogs for the past few years and tried it through profit accumulator as they had a £1 trial on. No ref link or advertising am genuinely looking for opinions. Up £300 so far and fairly easy to do with a bit of research and a starting bank of around the same value. First read about it on MoneySavingExpert back in... 2013 or so. Was really good for a few years and has dropped off massively since. Massive number of casinos moved out of the UK market in the last year and obviously somewhere like PA (where I started), OddsMonkey (where I moved to as they had better tools) and the rest have now got relatively huge numbers so bookies are much less generous than they used to be. I've still got an OM subscription but should probably cancel it one day. Most of the reload offers on the daily thing have an EV of under a quid which is just way too little reward for the effort. Given it's Ascot and the Premier League is starting it might be worth seeing if any places have special signups.
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Jun 15, 2020 14:58
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:Want to explain it for those not in the know? Basically that yeah. There are way too many casinos & bookmakers, they offer sign-up and reload promotions which have +EV. It used to be ridiculously easy to make 2-3k a month, now it has dropped a lot. I've barely touched it in the last 12 months or so. A bit of a brain dump. Feel free to ask more if you think it's not too off topic for this thread. Sports Simplest sports offers are bet x on an event and get a free bet worth x to use on a different event. So you put a £20 bet on United to win and lay it off on another website. Due to market cut meaning odds on the bookmakers aren't great that probably costs you <50p. They might then give you a £20 free bet. You go and put that on something else with the aim of getting about 80% of it back. The most useful skill is a level of comfort with figures. There are calculators that'll tell you what number to type in where, but having an understanding of those numbers definitely helps. There are some bets (betting on horses) where it's also rather useful to be quite fast at acting because the market just before a race (especially with greyhounds) can be very volatile. Knowing nothing about sports is actually really helpful because obviously the easiest way to lose money (other than the typo where you miss a 0 or add an extra 0 and get very upset when the horse wins and it cost you 10x what it should have) on these kind of things is if you start actually gambling and saying that of course the team can't lose and so not laying it off to save money. Works sometimes until it doesn't and can cost you a good chunk. More profitable sports bets are based on +EV for example a really popular offer (though the odds have turned crap due to how profitable they were for matched betters) was the 2up offer. Bet365 + Paddy Power paid out bets as winners if a team went 2 up irrespective of what the end result is. This doesn't happen that frequently, but when for example Man Utd came back from 2 down to beat Man C 3-2 to stop City winning the title, those who had bet on City to win the match and laid it off won both the back and the lay and with decent-sized bets can easily lead to 1k+ profit. As I said, 365 + Paddy Power odds have got worse since (they increased their overround/cut on the market) How much Having a couple of grand of float available is not at all necessary, but does speed the process up to begin with. Some start with £100 and build up slowly from there. Whatever bank you have available will work, but given the lack of sport over summer if you're wanting to get into it then making the most of the end of the season would be a good idea. Casino Casino offers involves a lot more trusting in the power of EV. Caisnos might give you a 100% bonus. You sign up, deposit £50, they give you a £50 bonus but you have to play it through 35x. That amount of play taking into account the RTP (Return to player) means that maybe there's an EV of £20 but that might have an 85% bust rate. This is the higher-risk side and I've been amazed by the way some people's EV graphs (tracking profit v EV) match the line really well while others (including mine) can be thousands of pounds below where it should be. After a couple of months I'd deposited ~£10,000, had ~£5,000 of EV and a profit of ~£300. Other friends in a similar situation were +£10,000, a couple were down a couple of grand. There are plenty of lower-risk offers, but those are the ones that generally have an EV of 73p for an hour of playing mindless slots. There are definitely reasons I wrote a bot to play these things. Popular websites include OddsMonkey (feel free to use my affiliate link that gets me £6 a month of the £15 a month sub if so inclined) and Profit Accumulator. They have guides to walk you through it all and answer any question. There's a free trial where they walk you through the first 2 offers I believe. They make their money from your sub but also by all their signup links being affiliate links where they profit off you losing. Those subs are decent for newbies. They have very useful calculators and tools to find the best value odds on a bookies website. The main reason I'm still subscribed (though through my own affiliate link so I get a cheaper subscription) is because they had an offer that meant you got 0% commission on a betting exchange called Smarkets where you lay off your bets. Longer term Once you've got used to it and feel comfortable, to make really decent money, people end up 'multi-accounting' which is basically running your friends betting accounts for them. People might pay say 10% profit to the client as a fee. The client provides a bank account & required documentation. It's common to have maybe 5 sets of accounts. On the higher end, some have 100+ accounts and hire people to do the offers for them (and use bots to automate the play because oh god slots are mindnumblingly tedious). This is not illegal despite sounding rather dubious. Sad Panda fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Jun 15, 2020 |
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Jun 15, 2020 19:10
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:Yeah got it. Thanks for the explination. Definitely. I guess I should have had made that more explicit somewhere in that. If it is treated like an investment, and strict rules are followed then it's an easy way to make some money. I'd be surprised if all the low hanging fruit is less than £1500. However, gambling is incredibly toxic and the appropriate caution is needed - especially on Casino because it's vey easy to be certain that losing an 11th hand of Blackjack in a row just isn't possible.
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Jun 16, 2020 09:54
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I went digging into Teachers Pensions and playing around with the calculator they have on their website. The amounts per year are revalued up until retirement rather than absolute amounts. I'm a first year teacher so salary of ~£24,000. My regular pension costs me about 7% (school contribution is about 20%). This gets me £427.60 a year. I have two options to increase this. 1. Faster accrual at 1/45 would cost me £1706.11 and increase that by pension amount by £114.03 to £541.62 a year. (Costs 14.96x the annual increase) 2. Additional Pension has the option of a lump sum of £2210 (or £2262 split over a year) to get a £250 increase. (Costs 8.84x the annual increase) Given the numbers, the additional pension is obviously the much more effective return. My question is, how does that ratio of investing £2210 (can get tax relief on this) to get a £250 increase in salary compare? I'm thinking in terms of for example putting £2210 into that pension to get £250 v £2210 into a SIPP. Obviously the SIPP is a lot more varied. Sad Panda fucked around with this message at 11:48 on Jun 17, 2020 |
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Jun 17, 2020 11:44
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Theophany posted:It would require a tremendous amount of mental gymnastics to recommend anything other than the defined benefit pension, tbh. OK, to make sure I'm not being an idiot. What you are saying is that rate of paying £2210 to get a £250 increase (which stays at the same rate up to the max of paying £61,880 for £7,000 a year pension increase) is the best option that there is and I should dump a fair chunk there? Sounds a good easy option to me.
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Jun 17, 2020 12:20
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Alchenar posted:Yes. If you are asking these questions and all you want is to spend your money now so that future you gets to retire happy and secure with a cheque every month then increasing contributions to your DB pension is the right way to go. The reason my savings go into an ISA rather than additional pension is because I enjoy doing the occasional bit of stock picking (it's really motivated me to take a much more serious look at how the economy works, which I consider self-improvement) and because while it's at risk it's still accessible should I decide I want to take some profit for any reason. Perfect, pushing a fair chunk into my pension it is then. I'll put some in ISAs too to have some level of accessibility to part of my money. Yeah it's not liking being fixed for one. I've had a rather nomadic time since I finished uni (worked in Asia for 6 years then cycled around the world for 7, which also means current pension & NI situation is rather non-existent) and very much see myself moving overseas as a distinct possibility in the not that distant future. My current living situation helps with that flexibility.
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Jun 17, 2020 15:51
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spincube posted:I'm being ripped-off by Sky at the moment for my broadband, so I'm due for a change. It's been literally a decade since I last switched (ironically after being ripped-off by BT), so I'm somewhat rusty: am I best off finding a package via Moneysupermarket, giving New Providertm my details, and waiting for the new equipment to arrive in the post? MoneySavingExpert is generally my goto. https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/broadband-and-tv/ I have Zen. Nothing close to the cheapest (£35/m?) but works well other than the terrible quality of the phone line.
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Aug 19, 2020 17:46
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NGC773 posted:I have always wanted to try this but I really don't like the idea of several bookies having my personal details. I have a friend who has registered account with 30+ bookies online but he has made 5k from it the last 12 months. Set specific things up for the account helps with the separation and also keep control of things. A new email address, PAYG SIM in another phone + separate bank account. Makes things marginally more effort in terms of moving money around and checking another email, but it definitely helps with the personal details bit. Then the only 'real' information that they have is your postal address + copy of your ID that you need to give them to prove who you are.
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Sep 6, 2020 13:32
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Soylent Green posted:So it's worth noting that they take the postal address and ID to perform KYC in line with various pieces of legislation, which are either aligned or the same as those that the banks have to comply with. The documents you provide are sufficient to run a full credit check to verify your identity, which lets them know a fair bit more about you. Definitely. They can still find out lots about you, but that level of segregation is useful to keep your main accounts disconnected. Much easier to track profit when you have a separate betting account. Same with all the emails and SMS they send. You still have to meet KYC guidelines, but that doesn't involve them ever having to use my regular email or spamming my normal phone number.
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Sep 10, 2020 18:31
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NGC773 posted:Ah yeah, thanks. I completely forgot that the bonuses are the core of making money with matched betting. Some offers are offered in shop. I've not done much betting for about a year, but for example BetFred would have boosted odds that were the same in shop and online. You could put 100 quid max on an account. You could do the same in each branch. That offer might say have profit of a tenner. Could run round every local Fred, put the bet on (go into bank to allow you to take out more than 250 quid in a day from the cash machines) and then if it comes in go and collect winnings. For example I went round and put 100 quid on some Champions League double a couple of years ago at 6 different BetFreds. There are also things called sharbs (shop arbs) but they're less frequent and, unless you're in a dedicated group, tedious to find
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Sep 11, 2020 15:31
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I bought additional pension contributions with a lump sum for my teachers pension a few months ago. I seem to remember that this means I can claim some kind of tax relief/top up? How do I do this? The teachers pension website doesn't seem to have anything that I can find.
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Feb 4, 2021 21:26
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Orlando Furioso posted:If the lump sum came from your salary then relief would be have given at source. If you made the lump sum payment direct to the pension fund you need to claim the relief from HMRC, you can do that via your Income Tax Self-Assessment return or contact HMRC by phone/post if you don't normally fit out a tax return. It was a lump sum payment. Thanks I'll give that link a look and work out what I need to fill in. Never filled in any tax stuff before other than that claiming some tax back for working at home this year.
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Feb 4, 2021 22:06
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Shelvocke posted:Have started contributing regularly to my Vanguard S&S ISA again. Anyone have thoughts on Lifestrategy Vs the S&P 500 ETF? Blend of the two? My understanding of the key rules is... 1. Past performance is no prediction of future 2. Buy the market - diverse is good. 3. Fees as low as possible. Given that, I went for the simplest option - Target Retirement 2050 as that's around about when I'm meant to retire. It seemed easier to use a single diverse fund than splitting them myself. I've got no knowledge of the market that the people at Vanguard have to make me think that S&P 500 will do better than Vanguard so have no reason not to just follow them given the very low fees. No idea about Fundsmith but referring to point 3 earlier they seem to charge 0.95-1.05%. Vanguard Target Retirement is 0.24% + 0.04 + 0.15 for a total of 0.43%. Sad Panda fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Nov 8, 2021 |
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Nov 8, 2021 19:32
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Theophany posted:Over the last 10 years, Fundsmith has done ~500% net of fees. Vanguard Target Retirement 2050 has done ~300%. Cost absolutely should be a consideration for investors, but so should value for money. I mean I'd never heard of Fundsmith until the post earlier, but isn't one of the core tenets of investing that 'Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results' as Vanguard says on their site? What makes Terry Smith better than buying the market in the long term? He had a good record before so should moving forward? This isn't me saying you're wrong at all. I'm genuinely unsure.
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Nov 8, 2021 23:25
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If you're taking out a fix, be attentive of the penalty to break. I had a fixed with Coventry which was 1.4% until next year. Closed and it will cost me 4 months interest. Worth it as I an account with 1.8% will have matched it by the end of this year and be ahead by next.
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Sep 27, 2022 16:34
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mfcrocker posted:I think I'd be on the hook for 1% of the entire balance, which is a bit spicier than I'd like. I'll still do the maths, but jumping onto a long-ish fix at 3.5% now isn't nearly as attractive as your 1.8% Just had a look on https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/savings-accounts-best-interest/ and Yorkshire currently 2.5%. Given its speculated to go up more, that seems like the better option.
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Sep 27, 2022 17:52
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That's a fair summary. Unless you know something that 'the market' doesn't (highly unlikely) then trying to time anything is adding risk. You want money in the market for as long as possible for it to maximise growth and minimise risk. Smarter Investing by Tim Hale is a good book at going into more detail about this and the why you should just invest in the market (cheapest index funds) and then leave it alone. Its fairly old but the core idea is still strong. I'm sure a local library would have a copy.
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Nov 5, 2022 09:16
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Yeah HMRC are good at these kind of things. Just be ready to be on hold. 90 minutes the other day, but sorted my issue out (not recorded my voluntary NI contribution) in 3 minutes when I got through.
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Aug 23, 2023 10:31
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sebzilla posted:Quick bit of advice. https://youtu.be/Ib1C3tujEno?si=J8kjqBHmVE3So78E I don't have children but here's a finance YouTube I do trust talking about it. The simplest thing for finance is time in market wins so investing that money early is a really good thing. Her getting 10k now and you investing it properly will be a lot more than you giving her 10k when she's 18.
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Feb 26, 2024 14:34
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I don't know about those specific ones, but the regular Vanguard Life Strategy 20/40/60/80/100 doesn't have very high fees. Slightly higher than a simple global tracker but definitely not a couple of percent. I think in the UK with Vanguard it's around 0.25%
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Mar 9, 2024 21:14
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Definitely. My understanding of it is basically it depends how comfortable with it you are. Easiest option - pay a financial advisor, accept 2-3% fees and know that they probably won't be as good as the market. Strong option - pick a fund like that which tracks the market with a balance you're happy with based on your risk profile. Has 0.25% fees Most involved option - buy the component parts of a fund you like and manually rebalance it. InvestEngine and a couple of other platforms have a tool that let you come up with a balance of investments and then it autobalances for you.
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Mar 10, 2024 09:27
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New tax year means playing with ISA time. I've currently got the last few years ISA allowance in a Vanguard account which has a 0.15% fee. Trading212 and InvestEngine both seem to have a 0 fee ISA so tempting to transfer in. InvestEngine have an offer where they give you a 'boost' for transfering in - https://investengine.com/isa/isa-transfer/#boost-your-isa whereas Trading212 has a 1% bonus for topping up with them so if you use your whole £20,000 allowance they'll give you £200 on top.
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Apr 7, 2024 22:22
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