Portfolio advice and critique for a beginner please?

[magpietribe]

No Risk = No reward.

Is there any 5 year period in the last 25 years where an S&P500 or MSCI World fund has not annualised >3%? And there have been several Black Swan events in that time.

OP should live a little.

 

[Sarenco]

No Risk = No reward.

Complete nonsense.

Paying down a mortgage ahead of schedule will give you a return equivalent to the weighted average mortgage rate over the remaining term of the mortgage.

That’s a guaranteed reward. With zero risk.

Is there any 5 year period in the last 25 years where an S&P500 or MSCI World fund has not annualised >3%?

Yes.

In fact, there have been 5-year periods where both indices have produced negative returns.

And that’s before you take investment costs and taxes into account.