Pensions and Mortages

[kaiser78]

If you can resist the temptation to cash them, then start with a stocks and shares ISA, you need to be thinking long term so see this as pension not savings and DO NOT bottle it and sell up when things get a bit bumpy - They will tend to recover if you can hold your nerve. You need to think 5+ years AT LEAST.
To smooth this - use pound-cost averaging to drip feed in.Also - get on fool.co.uk to see how the financial world works.
Finally - from a standing start most of your cash should go into the lowest charging (look up TER) index trackers you can find.
UK+US can be found very cheap, overseas trackers tend to be more - check out Vanguard, HSBC, Fidelity.
If you want to liven it up, consider 20% in a riskier area (emerging markets say - tho you could have missed boat or Gold - ditto)
OR go HYP with some solid dividend payers, individual shares cost less in mgmt fees.
Defo use a discount broker - I use HL.
Good luck !
I find it quite addictive, making the decision about what to get into next but NEVER bet the farm, build up a solid foundation in safe trackers etc and maybe have some fun with 10% each year.
How am I doing - pretty average, about 8% average annual return across all my funds across
14yrs or so.

Any decent IFA will say NOT to use pound cost averaging but to invest at the most suitable time.

[ratewhore]

pension - go and see an IFA, really.
mortgage - you don't need a contractor specialist. They were not competitive when I looked. I ended up with my own bank who wanted to see 2 years accounts and used my net profit figure as the basis for their lending criteria.

HTH.

[Wanderer]

Can anyone point me in the right direction to look for pensions (im 28 and still not got one set up!!!) and mortages and how do mortgages work given that your not in a perm role and planning things can be be a big problem...

Ask around about mortgages. If you have a good deposit and 2 years worth of accounts for your company then you might be able to just go with one of the main banks. Otherwise you might have to go to one of these specialist brokers and end up paying more.

Try and get a fully flexible mortgage if you can, I've been though all sorts of ups and downs with my one and it's been fantastic.

[SueEllen]

pension - go and see an IFA, really.
mortgage - you don't need a contractor specialist. They were not competitive when I looked. I ended up with my own bank who wanted to see 2 years accounts and used my net profit figure as the basis for their lending criteria.

HTH.

Actually with both you should do some research yourself and see if a broker/IFA will offer you anything better. If they can't then sort it out yourself. At the moment with mortgages going direct with banks/building societies you seem to be able to get better deals but you never know.

[Ignis Fatuus]

Any decent IFA will say NOT to use pound cost averaging but to invest at the most suitable time.

Absolutely. But if you don't know when that is (I don't), and your IFA doesn't either (he probably doesn't), then pound cost averaging beats a single random timing.

In the long term, it is vital to keep costs down. Even a small percentage in commissionyear after year will have a huge effect on your final pile: remember that's a % of your total investment, not of your return. That's why many people choose Hargreaves Lansdown or SIPPDeal: HL has low fees on many (not all) mutual funds, SIPPDeal has 0% holding fees on ETFs and shares.

[Support Monkey]

mortgage - you don't need a contractor specialist. They were not competitive when I looked. I ended up with my own bank who wanted to see 2 years accounts and used my net profit figure as the basis for their lending criteria.

HTH.

Each to his own but i found the opposite, local banks had me jumping through hoops and would not lend me anywhere near what i wanted with basic and divis, went to contractor money told them my daily rate and they came up with the best offer by far

banks generally only offer their own products Independents view all the offers

[Wanderer]

Each to his own but i found the opposite, local banks had me jumping through hoops and would not lend me anywhere near what i wanted with basic and divis, went to contractor money told them my daily rate and they came up with the best offer by far

It's been a while since I got a mortgage. Were the brokers the best in terms of amount available to borrow, interest rate or flexibility? Or all of these?