two day dry run

Possibly a bad choice of words, it’s pissing down in Glossop at the moment for day 2. ?

Day one of our two day dry run for the trip from my house to Cape Wrath next year.

Staying in Glossop tonight, Hebden Bridge for the train home tomorrow.

Still loving the versatility of a new school hardtail.

pension investments are easy, just put them into the one with the cheapest fees because that’s predictable?

As long as you are diversified and there’s some form of rebalancing going on then choose your risk level and AFAIK yes.

And it’s not just a few YouTubers and grumpy middle aged men off the internet who are saying it, its starting to become standard industry advice.

Get a book on personal finance and read it, see whether it tells you something different?

Look, it’s your money to invest as you please, so do what you’re happy with.

What i specifically said was that just moving to the cheapest fees doesn’t mean the best overall outcome, you need to look at returns as well. I don’t think that is disputable?

Yes, I’m afraid that it very much is.

Fees are predictable, returns are not.

This is exactly how actively managed funds fleece people repeatedly. But there’s no point in trying to warn people who don’t want to be warned, so point taken and I wish you the very best.

I reckon there’s about £60 worth of truffle there?

As with any windfall, I’d be decadent and stick it all in one dish. You’ll likely never get the chance again.

Only downside might be that it could be the start of an expensive habit.

I thought that pension contributions always came out before tax anyway?

But there again it’s a big bugger and it’ll take ages to get through otherwise.

Just use loads of it in one dish then?

I think you can store it with eggs and it’ll flavour them.

Because I don’t necessarily think easy and cheap is best value.

In that case, you will be well suited by an IFA and probably some actively managed funds. I honestly wish you the best of luck because if you’re doing ok, it’s highly likely that I will be too.

@theotherjonv you were the one who started with

Might be cheaper in fees but are the returns as good?

And then started recommending IFAs and their above market return with no increased risk funds.

Please don’t get defensive when, in return, your “advice” then gets critiqued.

IFAs charge a lot of money, for what is often, IMV and that of many others, false reassurance.

I get that you find this stressful, but your attitude to finding out whether it really needs to be that stressful seems to be that it’s too important to shoulder yourself, but not important enough for you to spend some time finding out about it.

I’m not in SIPPs, but I am invested in funds that can be included in a SIPP, but mine are wrapped in ISAs. That’s why I don’t know about pension protection, and admitted it. Would you rather I bullshitted about it?

Thanks all, Pico Lounge is looking good, Two Hares opens a bit late, we’ve got a big day on the Sunday.

I’d just do a very simple risotto and grate it on top. Anything too flavourful and you’ll lose the taste of the truffle.

Any you’d particularly recommend?

“Sorry – not interested. Bye”

There’s no need to be rude, angry or to waste anyone’s time.

This is the way.

However, one change that it a real pain is that they’ve limited the number of user profiles to just 3 – On Road, Off Road & Indoor and you can’t add any more. This may or may not be a problem.

Hmmm, that would be a problem, however if I’d never had the functionality I’m not sure I’d miss it if you know what I mean?

is the mapping that comes on Garmin devices sufficient for riding in the UK?

Yes and no I’d say.

I use a combination of Garmin Connect, Open Cycle Map and my lifetime access to OS maps on Outdoor Active to navigate and it’s OK.

However if I didn’t have the back up of the OS maps it would be a PITA, and even so the way I use it is not particularly user-friendly.

You can buy an OS maps download but it’s about ~£350 for a single licence for one device I think, so expensive.

Having said that, having a Garmin for navigation has transformed my riding and I really like it.

IANAE but

I strongly suspect it would be a bad idea to take money to pay off the mortgage especially if you are still working.

were my thoughts too.

any qualms about all your eggs in one basket?

I’m not sure what the investor protection rules are like for pensions so don’t know the answer to that question.

For other investments, the investor protection scheme has a limit of £85k so I’m careful to stay under that on each platform for precisely this reason.

@theotherjonv

Any links on that? Would like to discuss with the IFA when deciding whether to pay an ongoing fee or do a single consolidation and plan.

It was a few years ago, when I had a similar conversation with an IFA that made me realise that their advice generally isn’t worth much.

The finance industry is notoriously opaque when it comes to releasing the data on active funds. Much like big pharma, they only release the data that paints them in a flattering light, ie out perform the market. The ones that don’t never see the light of day.

Warren Buffet, famously, is an advocate for passive investing, and (I think) bet $1,000,000 each with three very successful active fund managers that they couldn’t outperform an index. He won.

My problem with IFAs is that they have a vested interest in promoting active funds, because often they get commission, but apart from that, if they don’t promote active funds there’s not really much else for them to justify the outrageous fees they charge.

That’s because once you decide on passive funds, investing actually gets really boring. You either decide on a managed fund (lifestyle funds etc) and pay a little more in fees for them to rebalance for you, or you decide for yourself on your allocation strategy, buy a mix of trackers and then rebalance according to your strategy.

Anyway when I started questioning the IFA on active vs passive funds and about where his commission would come from, he got quite tetchy and basically said that if I knew so much about passive funds, why was I wasting my (his!) time talking to him. I now agree.

Do you have any evidence of that happening, or is it just guessing?

Just guessing. Whenever you hear of a fund that collapses it seems to be actively managed.

Also just a minor point – if there is a major tank in the stock market it, your funds will suffer wherever they are.

Indeed.

I also suspect that actively managed funds are more likely to go under than tracker funds as the managers double down on their losses to try and make good.

OP reporting to the police is the right thing to have done.

The owner having alcohol issues is neither here nor there. You do him no favours by cutting him some slack, the only way that he *may* take some responsibility is by facing up to the consequences of his actions.

I have had two incidents with irresponsible owners in the past year.

One where two mad old bats were walking ten(!) dogs between them in Delamere Forest and the pack surrounded me and tried to steal my sandwiches, and all they could say was “we did try to warn you to put your sandwiches away.”

The second one where I was walking our three dogs on the lead and a woman let her dog come bounding up to us and start bouncing at our dogs, making it hard to keep them under control. When I politely asked her to put her dog on the lead she just said “no he’s ok” and carried on walking.

@dhague also a lot of people either don’t rebalance enough, or do it too often.

@theotherjonv

You’ll have to work that out for me.

<Ahem> I did get my back of fag packet calculation wrong. However I’ve now done it on a spread sheet.

Assuming 7% growth in your portfolio of £400,000 and adding £15,000 p.a., calculating yearly.

At the end of ten years your portfolio would be worth £1,001,360.90 without IFA fees.

Using the fee structure that your IFA suggested to you, your portfolio would be worth *£945,275.76

Thats a difference of *£56,085.14 or *5.9% over ten years. In today’s money, assuming inflation of 4%, that’s still ~ *£38k

That number does vary depending on how well the funds do, and also on how the fees and interest payments and charges etc are structured.

There’s nothing wrong with getting financial advice, in fact more people should do so. However you can get very decent financial advice, at varying levels of complexity, for free from the internet, because it is not as complicated as “Independent Financial Advisors” make out.

BTW Financial Advisors who work for a fee rather than a percentage are known as Wealth Managers, and IME you need  a portfolio of £1,000,000 + for them to work with you.

*updated figures, spreadsheet error spotted

I’m a dog owner. I’ve had a few experiences with irresponsible dog owners too.

@theotherjonv

That £5k is about 1.25% of my portfolio as a one off, then obv 0.5% going on but their returns are typically about 3% above ‘market’ on their balanced portfolio so nett should still be more cost effective even with what I’m paying for the advice.

So, in total over ten years they’re going to take ~11.3% of your portfolio even before fund fees are added. That’s a lot for looking at a spreadsheet once or twice a year and recommending either changing what you’re purchasing or some transfers between funds, especially when you buy funds that do it automatically for you for ~5% of your portfolio over 10 years.

What absolute returns are they suggesting you’ll get? ie what are they saying is “market”.

By all means use an IFA, but you don’t need one, and IME they’re generally they’re trying to sell you something that they make money on.

@poly, thanks for that well considered reply.

@DT78 the practice manager isn’t who I was ranting about in my other post.

And to be clear, I’m far from the only person who has a problem with the practice manager, in fact I don’t believe that there is anyone in the building who does not. The partners are aware of this.

I swear to God that George Osborne and David Cameron are going to go down in history as worse than the ones who came after them.

@soundninjauk indeed. I think my only option is to suck it up and then rant about it on here. ;-)

@soundninjauk – that’s how it should be, but they’re not particularly engaged. If I’m honest they’ve mostly got varying degrees of burnout and learned helplessness.

On my full sus tubeless with Stans and Cushcore.

On my hardtail and gravel/commuter tubeless.

In the past year I’ve had to use an inner tube twice, both for rim tape problems.

@surfer I too have no problems with purposeful meetings. It’s the pointless ones that get me.

@binners, the situation has many parallels. I may have to learn to draw.

@poly

have you considered that this might in fact be a “you problem”, and either the partners also suffer the same difficulty or are just politely nodding at your gripes whilst thinking “shit the **** up, come to the meeting, do as you are told, if we wanted you to run the practice we’d have made you practice manager or offered you a partnership”…

I did have the opportunity to become a partner and chose not to.

And no, that’s not what’s going on, although as mentioned earlier on, I’m not my best self in these meetings. I know that the partners hate them, I also know that the partners are scared of the practice manager. I also know that the partners aren’t really engaged with leadership within the practice, which is one of the reasons I declined a partnership.

I’m I have to say, from the tone of your posts you seem to have a problem with doctors in general and me in particular.

As far as I’m aware, outside of forensic psychiatry and patients under section no patient “has to attend” any clinic at all.

If a pipe cutter of any quality lasts 8 handlebar cuts its clearly either being used badly or is the incorrect tool for the job.

Or, over 8 years, the glue holding the knob on has gone off, causing it to fall off?

Cheap tools aren’t made to last.

@tomhoward I’m not going to pretend that I’m paid less than average, but I don’t think that being interested in personal finance automatically means that someone’s got loads of money to splash. In fact far from it, a lot of personal finance advice is about monitoring spending and budgeting.

@stevie750 not even close.

@ovoderbars I used to go The Bowgie where he used to DJ before he got famous. The dancefloor used to absolutely kick off.

BTW I’ve suggested standing meetings.

@tomhoward, I’d say that post was more about saving than spending?