You may have been the lucky winner of the £100 prize in the Mr MoneyJar/CompareThePlatform platform emoji competition. But even if you’re not, and you’re thinking about how to start investing, here are five ways to invest £100.
Robo investment
Deciding how and who to invest for the first time can be daunting. Robo-investors or robo-advisors are a great way to get started as they make the investing decisions for you. The robo-investors invest your money for you based on your attitude to and tolerance for risk. You don’t need to do any fund or stock selection.
We really like Bestinvest. The platform is anchored in strong and independent research (the research team is highly respected), providing investors with tools to help them make informed choices and good investment selections. As well as offering a DIY platform, Bestinvest also has advice and discretionary arms for investors who want to hand over the reins at some point or for more complicated investment objectives.
Circa5000 is another favourite with the team. It provides access to investments that have a positive impact on the world. Its aim is to build social responsibility into investing through their 4 portfolios: Climate Change, Disruptive Technology, Equality and Combination. The underlying investments are ETFs, which Circa5000 deem to have the best impact from a socio-ethical perspective. You can open an account with just £5.
DIY platforms
As well as robos, you can also invest your money through a DIY platform. Our calculators are designed to help you find the right platform and once you’ve found the right one for your circumstances, you can use their tools to find investments. Here are a couple of good starting points:
Vanguard LifeStrategy funds (20/40/60/80/100). These are passive multi-asset global funds that come with different equity exposure — the higher the number the higher the equity exposure and therefore the higher the risk. I have investment in the LifeStrategy 80 fund but I’m very, very comfortable with risk and happy to risk losing all of it.
The Compare+Invest team also likes the Royal London Sustainable World fund. Royal London’s sustainable fund range has been around for donkeys’ years – long before green investing became the rage. This is an actively managed fund so it’s pricier than the Vanguard funds, but it’s a consistent performer.
Savings and investment apps
Last but not least are the savings and investment apps. They’re great for helping you establish good saving and investment habits. We like moneybox a lot. In addition to a weekly minimum investment of £1, you can round up any card transactions to the nearest pound and invest them through moneybox. There are risk-targeted portfolios and they also come in ethical flavours.
Moneybox offers ISAs, Junior ISAs, Lifetime ISAs, SIPPs (pension) and a General Investment Account (GIA). It charges a monthly fee of £1 per account, on top of administration and underlying fund fees. To get you started, Moneybox waives the subscription fee for the first three months.
We also like Plum. Plum is a clever tool that moves spare cash from your current account and sets it aside for you. It works by linking to your bank account (it works with all major UK banks). It analyses transactions to learn about your income and spending and transfers surplus cash into your Plum account every few days.
From there, you can choose to invest your money into risk-rated basic portfolios: Conservative, Balanced and Growth or invest in more advanced, thematic portfolios such as Technology, Emerging Markets and Ethical. The funds in each portfolio are provided by Vanguard, Standard Life or Legal & General. Only ISA and GIA available. The Basic portfolios are good for first-time investors and are a mix of equity and bond portfolios depending on your attitude to risk.
Photo by Colin Watts on Unsplash
