Investment newbie looking for advice

Ualtar

Registered User
Messages
32
Hi Guys,

I have some money saved up and I'd like to start and invest, but I don't know where to start. I have spoken to AIB's financial adviser, but the minimum amount is 20K and they do not have many options. He said I should look for advice with any adviser from KBC, but I found the administration fee a bit high.

Any suggestions where to start? What is a reasonable management fee for investments?
 
You have to start with a full overview/review of your financial position, there's no way to give investment advice in isolation. Why do you want to invest? What is your expectation of return? What is your attitude to risk? What would you do if another Corona virus happened and your 20k became 10k overnight?

Information such as any existing mortgage, pension, emergency fund, martial position, kids, college fund, car loan, credit cards etc. I suggest you complete a "Money Makeover" section to get any meaningful response.

Also there's honestly so many existing threads on beginning investments identical to this, have you read them to have some idea "where to start"?
 
Hi Boyd,

Thank you for your time responding to this post. I confess I haven't looked for other similar posts. In the rush, I ended up writing another one. But thanks for the tip, I'll read other posts.

Answering your questions:
1. I want to invest to get a higher return than the banks have given me.
2. I am moderate in terms of risks, but I don't mind taking some risks.
3. I already have an emergency fund to deal with contingencies, so if my 20k became 10k overnight I would wait for the market to recover because I know it goes up and down is part of the financial market cycle.
4. No existing mortgage, the apartment is already mine, I have an employer pension plan, emergency fund, no kids, no college fund, car loan already paid and I use credit cards only when I go on holidays and need to rent a car.

I just found out that New Ireland Assurance is the company looking after my employer pension plan and they also have some investments. I will make an appointment with them to discuss a few things but beforehand, I wanted to know if the management's and performance's fees are not above the values applied by other companies in the same sector.
 
Unfortunately fees are very opaque from life companies. It's often anywhere from 1-2 or even 3%. I've seen MAPs funds being mentioned on here before. If you're investing a single lump sum I'd invest in one MSCI world index. Doing one purchase means you avoid most of the tax hassle (mainly associated with monthly dollar cost averaging purchasing approach). I did basically that have 3 funds with Degiro, about 10k invested for minimal fees. (I invested before I read about the tax thing, doh!).
 
Pension is probably the best show in town for PAYE workers - Grows tax free , Low charges <1% (or possibly zero charges depending on your employer) , reduces your PAYE bill and most likely you will pay little tax on the way out.
Picking individual shares is difficult to get right and very few people can beat the average S&P index and then there is the tax side of things to deal with.

I would keep it as simple as possible and stay away from things you don't fully understand. If I was to talk to my young self then I would have ploughed money into my pension and let compounding do its beautiful beautiful magic.

Try get your pension pot up to 100k as quick as possible. Once it hits 100k you see compounding really take off. The first 100k is really really hard but do the sums and you will see how powerful it is over 30/40 years.
 
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