A catch-up on how I invested my savings from March - August

One of my key goals for 2016 is to set myself on a path toward achieving Financial Independence. As part of my roadmap I intend to save money each month into my Freedom Kitty which is currently made up of two ISA's (one from the 2015-16 tax year, and one for the 2016-2017 year), and also into my Personal Pension which I hold with St. James Place. This post covers my investing choices for March - August.

Freedom Kitty Investment - March to April 2016

In March I used a combination of savings from February & March as well as profit from my flat sale to max out my 2015-2016 ISA with St. James Place. This saw me transfer in £14,810.53, meaning that the total money paid toward the ISA in the tax year was £16,010.53 (the excess over the annual ISA allowance of £15,240 was for initial fees).

Prior to making this lump sum transfer I'd only been investing £150 per month into the ISA and for that reason I'd been recommended to direct my money into just one fund. My lump sum investment therefore also went into this one fund. So my 2015-2016 ISA is invested in the UK High Income UT - Acc fund, a link for the Financial Times fact sheet on this can be found here.

At some point I will discuss with my financial advisor diversifying my fund choice a bit for the ISA - probably later this year.

Freedom Kitty Investment - May to August 2016

Of the available money I'd put aside for investing into my Freedom Kitty in May - August, I actually invested £2,500 of it. I was particularly busy with our house move during May and June so it took me a while to find time to investigate and choose where to invest for the 2016-2017 tax year. Making use of the Monevator's superb resource page "Compare the UK's cheapest online brokers" (which has been updated in August 2016), I finally made a decision at the start of July and opted to open an ISA with Lloyds Bank Direct Investments Online.

I decided that I would like to set-up a regular investment plan rather than just making ad hoc transfers into the ISA (in reality I will probably end up doing a combination of both). So I have set-up a plan to invest £1,000 per month from July onward. In addition to this, I also transferred a one-off contribution of £500 into the ISA in July so that I could test out how the investing process worked (seeing as I was completely new to online investing).

I have opted to keep things really simple for now, so my investments were as follows:

• £500 lump sum investment into Vanguard LifeStrategy 80% Equity Fund A Acc
• £1,000 regular investments into Vanguard LifeStrategy 60% Equity Fund A Acc

For now my ongoing regular investments are set-up to go into the Vanguard 60% LifeStrategy fund, but I may look to change this in future months.

Personal Pension Investment - March to August 2016

For the period March - August 2016 the following contributions from my Business Account were made into my Personal Pension:

• March: £3,000
• April: £3,000
• May: £1,000
• June: £ 350
• July: £1,000
• August: £1,000
• TOTAL: £9,350

The amounts fluctuated because I was going through a period of not doing any work contracts (for 4 months), therefore without any income source I opted to reduce the contributions to my pension scheme slightly.

Since I have a financial advisor at St. James Place where my Personal Pension is held, they select the best investment options for me based on my propensity to accept risk. The approximate split for the current allocation of my investments is as follows (I've included links to the Financial Times fund factsheets):

SJP Global Equity - 14.5%
SJP Schroder Managed - 14.5%
SJP Strategic Managed - 14.5%
SJP AXA Framlington Managed Pension - 13.5%
SJP Global Managed - 13%
SJP Worldwide Managed - 13%
SJP International Equity - 9.5%
SJP Multi Asset - 5%
SJP Strategic Income - 2.5%

It's quite an interesting exercise for me to delve into the funds which are underlying my pension investments, because I have to confess that most of the time I'm largely unaware of where the money is invested having chosen to leave these choices in the hands of my financial advisor. I've received comments previously and have seen similar view points while reading other personal finance blogs, that the charges for my pension funds are considered high, particularly compared to what I would likely choose if I managed my pension investments myself. However, for now I'm happy with the status quo of where things are. Time is a very precious commodity for me, I have many projects I'm working on at any given time, so it's nice to be able to invest into my pension without having to worry about monitoring and selecting the investment choices. I'm having a dabble at my own investing in this year's ISA to see how that goes, maybe at some point in the future I'll reassess things, who knows!

The key thing for me right now is that I'm investing more money than I ever have before, and it's all moving me in the right direction to my goal of becoming financially independent by the time I'm 50.

If you have any thoughts on my investment choices, or anything else about this blog please do let me know in the comments below...

How I invested my savings from February

Each month I will be publishing the following regular progress updates toward achieving my second goal for 2016 which includes the pursuit of Financial Independence:
1. Portfolio Value and Net Worth as it stood at the end of the previous month
2. Income, Expenses and Savings achieved for the previous month
3. My Investing Choice for the previous month's savings

This post covers point 3 above: My investing choice.

Freedom Kitty Investment - Feb 2016

As I discussed in my Income, Expenses and Savings update I was able to save £1,048.22 toward my Freedom Kitty for February 2016.

Last year I decided that I wanted to have a stocks and shares ISA even if I was only able to invest a small amount into it, so since July 2015 I've been saving £150 per month into an ISA with St. James Place. With the tax year end fast approaching I decided that the best place to put my hard earned savings from February would be into this ISA - anything I can do to max out the ISA for the 2015-2016 tax year would be a good idea.

However, while I took time to decide where to put the money, as well as deciding what to do with some profit I made on the recent sale of my flat (which completed in January) I didn't get chance to invest the money during February. Therefore you will see when I publish my investing post for March how much I finally managed to transfer into my ISA before tax year end (essentially the sum of my savings from February, March and the profit from my flat) as well as the fund choice.

Sorry it's not much of an update about my investing for February, but since I have committed to providing 3 regular progress updates per month on my financial independence goal I felt it was important to be consistent and publish the 3rd post for February anyway (even though the detail will really be coming in March).

Personal Pension Investment - Feb 2016

In February my Personal Pension received a regular contribution from my Business Account of £3,000. My Personal Pension is held with St. James Place. Previously I'd had 3 different pension accounts which I'd accumulated from working at different places where a workplace pension was provided, so I chose St. James Place to consolidate these (a process I began back in February 2015).

One of the reasons I chose St. James Place (SJP) is because I don't know a thing about investing (or at least I didn't at the time of my decision!) and so I was looking for somewhere with a Financial Advisor I felt I could trust. Since my parents had held their pensions with SJP and were very happy with how their affairs had been handled it seemed a sensible decision to follow suit. I had previously sat in on some of their meetings with their financial advisor to make sure I was happy that everything was being done as I felt it should be (although I'm no expert, I have worked at a Pensions company in my past, and I felt I knew a bit more than my parents so could let them know if I felt anything didn't feel right!) I like that you get assigned a financial advisor who will always be your contact, and they will come out to see you at a place and time that's convenient for you several times a year (on an as-needed basis). So far I have been very happy with the SJP product and service, though it's a bit early to tell how well the investment will do.

Since I have a financial advisor at SJP he ascertains my propensity to accept risk, and selects the best investment options on that basis. The approximate split for the current allocation of my contributions is as follows (I've included links to the fund factsheets on Trustnet):

SJP Global Equity - 15%
SJP Schroder Managed - 15%
SJP Strategic Income - 15%
SJP Strategic Managed - 15%
SJP AXA Framlington Managed Pension - 15%
SJP Multi Asset - 15%
SJP Global Managed - 10%


Do you use a Financial Advisor or Company to invest with or do you undertake your own investing? If you self-invest, I'm interested to know how you first learned the basics of how to do it, and how you found the process of investing in the early days.
Do let me know in the comments if you have any thoughts...