Investing for a novice

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  • wallace_and_gromit
    wallace_and_gromit Posts: 3,390
    surrey_commuter said:

    when I get closer to retirement I would happily pay somebody by the hour for tax advice just to make sure I am not missing anything.

    I recently tried to secure the services of a FA (generally ones used by my colleagues) to guide me through the maze re lifetime allowances etc.

    Communications generally went like this:
    - Potential FA: What's your background?
    - Me: Looking to retire in a few years, tidy wedge invested in a personal pension
    - Potential FA: What sort of advice are you after?
    - Me: One-off advice re lifetime allowance
    - Potential FA: Resounding silence

    My conclusion is that most FAs that I tried to tap into are mainly interested in ongoing management fees rather than one-off fees for actual advice.

    Some years prior to this, St James's Place cold called me to offer financial advice. Our of curiosity, I went along and found the whole experience rather depressing. Cutting a long story short, St James's Place's offering was to advise an investment strategy that I'd long-since run myself, for a sizeable "signing on" fee and non-trivial ongoing fees. To his credit, their Advisor concluded with "I don't think we can really help you."

    So good luck!
  • surrey_commuter
    surrey_commuter Posts: 18,867
    wallace_and_gromit said:

    surrey_commuter said:

    when I get closer to retirement I would happily pay somebody by the hour for tax advice just to make sure I am not missing anything.

    I recently tried to secure the services of a FA (generally ones used by my colleagues) to guide me through the maze re lifetime allowances etc.

    Communications generally went like this:
    - Potential FA: What's your background?
    - Me: Looking to retire in a few years, tidy wedge invested in a personal pension
    - Potential FA: What sort of advice are you after?
    - Me: One-off advice re lifetime allowance
    - Potential FA: Resounding silence

    My conclusion is that most FAs that I tried to tap into are mainly interested in ongoing management fees rather than one-off fees for actual advice.

    Some years prior to this, St James's Place cold called me to offer financial advice. Our of curiosity, I went along and found the whole experience rather depressing. Cutting a long story short, St James's Place's offering was to advise an investment strategy that I'd long-since run myself, for a sizeable "signing on" fee and non-trivial ongoing fees. To his credit, their Advisor concluded with "I don't think we can really help you."

    So good luck!
    @Dorset_Boy what hourly rate would an IFA need to charge to make a living giving people an annual or one off financial service/MOT. Of course buildingmeeting prep into that cost.

    By my sh1t maths he should be able to make a good living charging £200.
  • shirley_basso
    shirley_basso Posts: 6,195
    If you are serious I can ask around as we have an office in the Midlands who deal with IFAs regularly. PM me if you are happy to share a small amount of info so I can find someone useful.
  • Dorset_Boy
    Dorset_Boy Posts: 7,391
    The regulator really expects an ongoing service to be provided, and are far from keen on one off bits of advice, hence the relative silence mentioned above.

    £200 ph is probably ball park Surrey_C but bear in mind that the liability is linked to the fund values being talked about, and that then needs to be priced in somewhere. Also remember that given the level of compliance requirements and ridiculous costs of things like PII and the FSCS levy, there are a lot of hours worked that are not chargeable.

    With regards to tax, most financial advisers will not be licenced to give tax advice, but will have a working knowledge to the tax system.
    Likewise most accountants are not licenced to give financial advice so can't talk about pensions, investments etc. They also tend to know sweet FA about those subjects!

    Advice is all about trust. If you don't like or trust the person you are talking to, walk away. We all have our prefered providers, and ones we will not deal with. So just because adviser 1 useds one set of providers, that doesn't make them better or worse than adviser 2 who uses different providers. They just might have better relationships with those providers.

    I do not believe portfolios can be managed without discretionary powers, so you need either a Managed portfolio Solution (MPS - suitable for most people) or if you are really involved then a bespoke discretionary service (only suitable for abouty 0.2% of people). If the client has to sign off on every change, the changes just won't happen, or won't happen in a timely structured way.

    but the key to it all is trust.

    And one final thing, if you are 18 or over, and haven't done so already, the most important single thing to do, is put in place Last Powers of Attorney for Property and fFinancial Affairs. Don't line a solicitor's pocket as they have to use the standard form / wording from the Court of Protection, do it through the .gov website. Cost is £82.

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