silver surfer Posted September 3, 2016 Share Posted September 3, 2016 Retirement might just be over if you entrust your hard earned to a UK financial adviser or investment manager IMHO. A study by Grant Thornton (free link to the study on my blog as the FT now allow me to provide free links from my URL) concludes that someone entrusting their financial well being to a UK financial adviser or investment manager would pay an average 2.56% annually for planning and product expenses. The killer with fees isn't the cost in any one year. It's the compounding effect over your investing lifetime. The pensions landscape is a lot grimmer now than, say, in the 1980's. But at least nowadays there's an abundance of good value options like trackers and trading only stock brokers, which at least allow an investor to clear almost all fees out of the equation. Not to take advantage of those just cuts you off at the knees. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justthisbloke Posted September 3, 2016 Share Posted September 3, 2016 I agree it is essential. I've made plenty of investing mistakes on the way and will make plenty more I'm sure. Positively none of them (yet) have been catastrophic. The worst has been not leveraging up and buying an already over priced house. That decision cost me £95k. Cost you £95k but I'll bet being debt-free saved you from some sleepless nights. Well, it would me. Moving into an even more speculative, soft-issue realm: did it even cost you £95k? Did being a filthy renter and needing an unconventional Plan B (rather than the usual middle class mortgage-work-pension-with-side-order-of-school-fees story) influence the path you chose and that has resulted in a FIRE-size pot of loot? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wish I could afford one Posted September 3, 2016 Share Posted September 3, 2016 The killer with fees isn't the cost in any one year. It's the compounding effect over your investing lifetime. The pensions landscape is a lot grimmer now than, say, in the 1980's. But at least nowadays there's an abundance of good value options like trackers and trading only stock brokers, which at least allow an investor to clear almost all fees out of the equation. Not to take advantage of those just cuts you off at the knees. Agree 100%. I now have my total investment expenses (investment product and wrapper) down to 0.24%. Compared to that 2.56% the experts would have to find 2.32% of out performance every year forever to just break even. With active investing being a zero sum game I just don't see that happening. All IMHO of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wish I could afford one Posted September 3, 2016 Share Posted September 3, 2016 Cost you £95k but I'll bet being debt-free saved you from some sleepless nights. Well, it would me. Moving into an even more speculative, soft-issue realm: did it even cost you £95k? Did being a filthy renter and needing an unconventional Plan B (rather than the usual middle class mortgage-work-pension-with-side-order-of-school-fees story) influence the path you chose and that has resulted in a FIRE-size pot of loot? You are of course correct. If I had have bought I probably wouldn't have ever activated Plan B. I would have probably just about paid down the mortgage about now and not much else. Of course I can't be sure as it's not the path I ended up walking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goldbug9999 Posted September 3, 2016 Share Posted September 3, 2016 A few thousand visitors a week is pretty impressive for a blog like that TBH. Just out of interest - do you think everyone could do what you do? i.e. could we all do passive investing with portfolio re-balancing, or would that break the markets? If your investments out perform the market, they are being funded by under performing ones somewhere else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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