Q&A: Where should I start with investing if I'm afraid of risk?

​Hi Heather,
 
Happy new year!
 
I’m a big fan of yours and have been following you for a while. I bought all your three books.
 
I would like to open a stocks and shares ISA for myself and two children aged 16 & 14 but I don’t know where to start due to fear of risk. I want to invest 15% of my income in stocks and also considering real estate.
 
I have seen some recommendations like Vanguard or Hargreaves Lansdowne but I’m clueless on what to go for. I am a nurse and the only debt I have is a repayment mortgage. I just finished paying off credit card debt.
 
I saw your post on Malawi Queens.
 
Please help.
Thank you
My name’s Angela by the way.

The Money Spot™ - UK Personal Finance · #9 How should I be investing if I'm scared of risk?

Angela – congratulations on getting rid of all your credit card debt, you must be super proud of yourself.
 
And a massive thank you for supporting me by buying my books. Book sales are helping to pay for the production of “The Money Spot” podcast so I don’t take your purchase for granted – it’s really appreciated.
 
Stocks and shares ISA
 
When it comes to investing in stocks and shares ISAs, target a minimum investment period of 5 years and ideally your should invest for much longer than that.
 
Is the money that you want to save for your children for university or for something else?
 
I will assume it’s to contribute towards the cost of university. One important thing that you need to keep in mind is that although tuition fees are given to students as long as they apply for them, the maintenance loan is assessed according to household wealth; basically, children that come from wealthier households are eligible for a smaller maintenance allowance. Only children from households with a total income of less than £25,000 qualify for the full maintenance loan.
 
In addition, students that live at home get a smaller maintenance allowance and those that attend universities outside of London qualify for a lower maintenance loan.
 
In my opinion, the less debt children can get themselves into by the time they graduate, the more disposable income they’ll have when they land their first jobs and the faster they can save for a deposit on a mortgage.
 
If you want to read a little more about what you might need to contribute towards university costs, have a look at the moneysavingexpert.com website. The site has a ready-made calculator that will tell you exactly how much you need to save for each child to contribute towards university. Or, for parents that don’t want to contribute then it’s how much their children will need to earn from a uni job to fill the gap.
 
The calculator will also tell you exactly how much you need to save every month from now to make sure you have enough by the time your child starts university.
 
Child aged 16
 
For your 16 year old, saving into a stocks and shares ISA is too risky because university is just around the corner – the stock market generally doesn’t offer good returns for periods of less than 5 years.
 
The safest option for the 16 year old is probably to save into a high interest account, this might not be a cash ISA so shop around. The best rate you will find at the moment is between 1.45% to 1.65%.
 
Child aged 14
 
As you could put money away for five years for your 14 year old, a stocks and shares ISA makes sense here. Again, use the calculator on money saving expert for an idea of how much you will need to contribute each month if you don’t want your children to have to work through university.
 
Your ISA
 
For your own ISA, you have a limit of £20,000 per year. If you prefer, you can save all the money into your own ISA rather than into junior ISAs so that you have more control over it.
 
Money saved into a Junior ISA is legally belongs to the child named on the account when they turn 18 and you would have no control over how they choose to spend it.
 
Risk
 
Before I tackle where you should save I will say that you have every right to fear taking risk with your money, you’ve worked hard to earn it so you should rightfully want to preserve what you have earned.
 
The safest path if you are investing in shares is to avoid single stocks and to invest in diversified index funds. There are two main types of fund to choose between, actively managed funds and passively managed funds.
 
Passively managed funds track a whole market such as the S&P500 for the USA or the FTSE100 for the UK; alternatively, instead of tracking the whole market in a given country you can choose to invest in a specific sector such as utilities or technology or retail.
 
Actively managed funds have a an actual person choosing what shares will outperform the market and investing exclusively in those. The objective of an active manager is to beat the index, while the objective of a passive fund is to match the return on an index.
 
Now, you would think the funds managed by clever fund managers are the ones to go for, right? Wrong! History suggests that over 95% of the time fund managers do not beat the index. Not only that, fees on actively managed funds are higher. The cheapest are about 0.5% nowadays and the most expensive charge in the region of 2%. Many passive funds now charge less 0.2% or what industry professionals call 20 basis points or bps.
 
How can you improve your risk appetite?
 
Improve your understanding of how stock markets work. I would recommend two investment books, if you can, get the audio versions:
 
Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor by Tren Griffin and
Common Sense Investing By John Bogle (the inventor of passive investing)
 
Which platform should you use for investing?
 
I personally use iWeb for share dealing because they are the cheapest but I wouldn’t recommend iWeb for most people because you can’t automate your investing. That said, iWeb have good fund centre that helps you sort through the different indices and allows you to order them in different ways, for example, you can sort funds or shares from those with the lowest fees or starting from those that are enjoying the highest return down, you can also exclusively analyse the different sectors that you might want to invest in – technology is enjoying pretty good returns at the moment but I don’t put too much into tech because it’s volatile it goes up fast and can also come down fast.
 
Even if you ultimately choose to invest using a different platform you might want to use iWeb for stock selection if their analysis tools are better than where you end up.
 
iWeb’s fund centre is actually easier for discovery than HL – HL seem to have a vested interest in people selecting actively managed funds so those show up more prominently on their site. They don’t seem, for example, to have a tool that allows you to just look at absolutely every fund they offer ordered by fees. If I just haven’t found this function, someone please help a sister out and send me the link.
 
So, what platform should you use?
 
The two options you have suggested (HL and vanguard) are very different.
 
The likes of Vanguard only offer their own funds. This isn’t a bad thing necessarily but it would mean you need to be sure you won’t want to invest any other fund manager’s products and that is a hard position for a beginner to take.
 
The likes of Hargreaves Lansdown offer you access to a large universe of fund managers. HL don’t create funds, they are essentially a supermarket for other fund managers. It’s the difference between shopping at Aldi and Sainsbury’s. If you want choice, you go to Sainsbury’s; if you’re not too bothered about choice and want to save money, you go to Aldi, but you’re mostly only going to find Aldi’s own-brand products at Aldi – this is not a perfect analogy but it’s not a bad one.
 
Vanguard’s passively managed index funds are known for being very cost effective but they’re platform charges are not the cheapest. At least not in the UK.
 
The likes of Fidelity have a hybrid model: they offer their own funds and other fund managers’ products BUT if you use their tools for selecting funds, which I did to write this piece, the resulting suggestion is one of their own funds.
 
The biggest driver for where you invest should be fees, customer service and ease of use of the platform.
 
Fees
 
Platform fees are the fees you get charged for using a given platform.
 
Vanguard       0.15%
HL                   0.45% (if less than £250k and 0 if > £2m)
iWeb               0
Halifax            £12.50
Fidelity           0.35%
 
Either way, if you have less than £50,000 invested the differences in fees aren’t that dramatic but as you start approaching £250,000 in investments you will feel the difference. Once you have £250k invested, and trust me you will get there, on iWeb you would be paying £60/year (if you trade once a month) and on HL you would be paying £1,125 for the same assets invested.
Little tip, because I invest for both my husband and I, instead of splitting monthly investments in half, so half goes to his account and half to me, each month I do one trade for either me or for him so that the net result is that we do 6 trades each. This saves £60 in dealing costs every year. Obviously I could save even more by doing one trade a year but as our incomes are paid monthly it’s better to invest monthly rather than just keep the money in a savings account for one trade at the end of the year. I’d lose all the gains I make within the year.
 
Transaction fees are the fees you pay for buying an investment product – these can be a fixed sum or a percentage. Some platforms will have one charge for buying and selling shares and another for funds.
 
Vanguard       depends on the product – 0.02% to close to 2%
HL                   0 for funds, £12/share falling to £6 a share for 20 trades +
iWeb               £5
Halifax           £12.50/share or £2/month for scheduled investment
Fidelity           £10/share or £1.50/month for scheduled investment
 
Because Fidelity’s platform fees are cheaper than HL, I am tempted to recommend them but I think you should make the decision. Why don’t you spend an hour a day on each of the following three site: HL, Fidelity and Halifax. Download their apps and see what you think of them. If by the end of that analysis you’re not sure then I will suggest you use HL as a beginner and as you figure out how things work move platforms, it’s very easy to do that.
 
Also, it’s worth mentioning that I pulled a couple of funds that I invest in on Fidelity and you pay more for them via Fidelity because HL negotiates discounts with actively managed funds due to the volume of business they direct their way.
 
 
NOW – I have spoken a lot about investing as I felt that that’s what you wanted me to focus on but I think this discussion would not be complete without me saying that, ultimately, if the stock market scares you, then you can go the property route.
 
Property
 
There are many strategies you can follow with property. You can rent to families, or students or even another subset of people. One of my friends specialises in letting property to truck drivers. Letting to students or a migrant group like truck drivers has high turnover which means you need a lot of time to manage the property. And if you went down the AirBnB route that’s like managing a hotel because you have to think about changing sheets and cleaning literally week-on-week – as involving as it sounds, I have a friend who has a full time job as a professor and has also grown a good property portfolio on the side with a mix of AirBnB and family lets.
 
The key is to start with your first property.
 
Have you heard of the 3 for 1 property strategy?
 
With this strategy you set a goal of investing in 3 buy to let properties and you work to have all mortgages paid off by the time you retire.
 
This would mean that you live in one fully paid off house and you would live off the rent of the three properties – this reduces the risk somewhat. For each buy-to-let property you would target a given amount of rental earnings that you can choose yourself . For example if each property earned £800 per month, then you would retire on £2,400 / month. This would be linked to inflation because as prices rise, rents also tend to rise and sometimes rental increases rise far faster [example].
 
If this feels safer for you and you have at least 20 years until retirement then think about either just going for the 3 for 1 property strategy with a good lump-sum saved in a savings account for emergencies might feel less risky OR follow a combination of investing small amount in the stock market with property as your security blanket.
 
Massively enjoyed answering this question, Angela, especially from a fellow Malawian. It’s nice to know other people are investing and getting wealth focused.
 
Let’s summarise what you need to do:

1. Reduce your fear of stock markets by reading widely. Start with Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor by Tren Griffin and Common Sense Investing By John Bogle.
2. Spend one hour on different nights on platforms you could potentially use for investing – HL, fidelity and Halifax are good places to start.
3. If you’re going to invest in property think about the ideal type of client: families, students or some other group.
4. If you’re going to invest in property think about whether you’re going to try to follow a given model. I gave examples of the 3 for 1 strategy, AirBnB but there are many more.

 
I hope this helps!
Heather

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