I set-up an investment ISA with Barclays a couple of years ago for my daughter. No real plan for it yet…uni, wedding, house deposit etc. but good to know there will hopefully be something there. She’s only 5, so got a while yet!
I spent quite a lot of time looking at funds and soon realised that unless you are investing relatively large amounts you have to go for the riskier funds to get a decent return.
I have currently got 4 funds invested:
A Fidelity Asian fund
L&G global 100 Index Trust
Meridian UK Mid Cap R A
Vanguard Lifestyle strategy 80%equity A
The lowest return so far is Meridian with 9.7%, highest is the Fidelity Asian one with 39.7%.
I should ditch the Meridian one when I find time.
The way I do it is set-up an HSBC regular saver account. This used to return 5% with £250 max a month to invest over 12 months. When that is completed after the 12 months, I use that money to invest and start a new regular saver. Annoyingly, the rate has halved now to 2.5% but it’s convenient for me to keep using it as an HSBC customer.
Each time I invest, I look for a different area to invest in to try and spread the risk.
The Barclays smart investor website has some good tools to learn a bit about it. I am not particularly savvy when it comes to this type of thing, but it’s working OK so far!