Before you begin investing, you might be worried about making mistakes and losing money. I know I was, but I decided at some point I’d have to bite the bullet and just get started. I started small and with money I could afford to lose (though obviously didn’t want to lose). I have made a few mistakes that I’ve shared below. You’ll see they’re not worth avoiding investing for but hopefully you’ll be able to avoid them. Mistake #1- Investing…
Investing presents a conundrum. It is both a way to grow your wealth and a way to lose money. It is true that you could invest money in a company or fund and the value could fall. If you sell when the value of your investment has fallen, you will have lost money. However, investing is less risky than you may think You can make rational decisions that make investing less of a risk. Diversification Lets get back to basics….
I personally choose to invest in funds. They make it easier to invest in lots of companies and therefore reduce my risk. There’s a few things to know about funds, which will help you decided what to invest in. Income or Accumulation funds Most funds have an income version and an accumulation version. An income fund is one that pays dividends into your online account, so you can withdraw them and spend them or invest them elsewhere. An accumulation fund…
Now that you know a bit about different types of investments, you need to know how to acutally get your money into investments. That’s where platforms come in. So, what is a platform? Platforms are to investing what travel agents are to holidays. Just like Thomson the travel agent will sell holidays by lots of travel companies (like first choice, thomas cook, kuoni, P&O, haven holidays), the platform you choose will enable you to buy funds from a huge choise…
This page will help you understand the tax implications of investing. Money that you make investing is normally subject to tax. I do all my investing in a Stocks and Shares ISA so that neither of these taxes are due, but if you have more than the ISA allowance to invest, you may need to report your returns to HMRC. There are two different taxes to be aware of; Capital Gains Tax and Income tax Capital Gains Tax When you…
This page explains how different investments work. There are a number of ways to invest including: By picking stocks and shares in individual companies By investing in a fund By investing in bonds or gilts By investing etfs Here’s a bit more information about different investments work. Picking individual stocks and shares: If a company is a PLC, it offers shares to members of the public- you and me. That means that anyone can buy a proportion of a company….
Welcome to this beginners guide to investing. If you have no experience of investing yet, this is a great place to start. Investing if full of concepts and terminolgy that seems really complex and off putting. The answer to one question can lead to several others. Before you know it, you’ve spent a few hours reading and are still none the wiser. If you’re at the start of your journey in learning about investing, you’re probably not going to feel…
There was a time when I was so scared of losing money that I flat out refused to think about investing. More than once I said that I would never, ever invest in the stock market. Some people are so confident, they see investing as a guaranteed win and make reckless decisions. I was so fearful that I saw it as a guaranteed loss. Until the penny dropped. If this sounds like you, you might not be ready to invest…
Are you frugal or a spender? And do you accidentally or deliberately spend and save? You hear all the time about how consumer driven our society is. And with £77bn spent on Christmas in the UK alone, it is hard to deny. Being frugal can feel like something we have to try really damn hard at. Spending, on the other hand? Easy peasy! When you’re balancing a tight budget, trying to save for a deposit on a house or towards…
Since the economic crash in 2007 and 2008, there has been a lot more belt tightening. Lots of people had no choice but to be frugal. Others adopted frugality to protect themselves, pay down debt, and get themselves into a less exposed financial position. Frugality means different things to different people, and that meaning has evolved, as language tends to. Or perhaps it is our perspective that has changed. Frugal is defined as “the quality of being frugal, or prudent…