Go to any UK investment platform and you’ll be offered two broad types of fund. Active funds, where a manager picks investments with the aim of beating the market. And passive funds — usually called trackers or index funds — which simply mirror an index and don’t try to beat
Working through the Lifetime ISA pros and cons is an unusual exercise, because the same product manages to be both the most generous and the most punitive ISA the UK government offers — at the same time. It hands you a 25% top-up on everything you contribute. That’s free money
If you’ve spent any time reading about investing — even a few articles — you’ll have noticed something odd. Whether the source is a Nobel-winning economist, a personal finance blogger, the Money pages of a broadsheet, or your slightly evangelical friend who’s read one Tim Hale book, they all eventually
If you’ve been investing for a while, there’s a question that probably crosses your mind every few months: am I doing this right? Sometimes the question is prompted by a market wobble, sometimes by a colleague’s confident-sounding stock tip, sometimes by a financial podcast you didn’t mean to start listening
Fees are the most boring part of investing. They’re also the only part you can control with absolute certainty. You can’t control whether the FTSE All-Share goes up or down. You can’t control inflation, interest rates, or what an American president decides to post on a Tuesday morning. But you
Most people who haven’t started investing assume they need a lot of money. A few thousand pounds, at least. Maybe ten. Some round number that signals “now I’m a proper grown-up with proper savings, and I can do the proper grown-up thing.” That belief keeps people out of the market
Once you’ve accepted that you should be investing, the next question is usually: where? The two obvious answers in the UK are a Stocks and Shares ISA and a SIPP (Self-Invested Personal Pension). Both are tax wrappers. Both let you hold the same kinds of investments. Both reward people who
Category: The Long Game · Reading time: 9 minutes · By Stuart Welch At some point — possibly soon, possibly not for years, but certainly at some point — you will open your investment account and find it is worth less than you put in. The number will be red. There may be a
Category: Platforms & Charges · Reading time: 9 minutes · By Stuart Welch Choosing where to open your Stocks and Shares ISA is one of the first practical decisions you’ll make as an investor. It’s also one that a lot of people spend far too long on, paralysed by the number of options and
Category: ISAs & Pensions · Reading time: 11 minutes · By Stuart Welch If you’ve spent any time reading about investing in the UK, you’ve encountered the acronym ISA approximately four hundred times. Individual Savings Account. Everyone tells you to open one. Fewer people explain clearly what it actually is, why it matters, and
Category: Getting Started · Reading time: 8 minutes · By Stuart Welch Nobody sat you down at school and explained this. Nobody did it when you got your first job, or your first payslip, or the first time you looked at your bank account and thought there should probably be more in it by
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