Let's start slowly and simply.....

Let's start slowly and simply.....

May 01, 2022

Do you need a guru or an advisor, are you a genius, do you have a degree in business studies or maths, well let me tell you right now you don’t need any of that!

Sometime ago read a book called “How to own the World” by a brilliant author called Andrew Craig, I got so much from it, I also bought the audiobook so I could listen when driving, and it opened my eyes to what else I could achieve from an investing and making money standpoint

So, why don’t you need anyone but yourself to start, because you can do it on your own, just open a Vanguard Stocks and Shares ISA, and depending where you are in life, you could do a lot worse than one their Life Strategy Funds, or Target Retirement Funds.

Vanguard are one of the largest Fund providers in the world and the important part is they are one of the cheapest as fees can eat into your returns.

One of my favourite funds and one I keep adding to is VHYL or to use the long description “FTSE All-World High Dividend Yield UCITS ETF” now how boring and long winded is that, so VHYL is the thing to search for.

VHYL (at time of writing) owns 1,791 stocks from around the world, returns a yield of 3.18% (compare this to a standard savings account), and amongst the funds top holdings are Nestle, Bank of America, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, Coca-Cola, Toyota, Pepsico, Intel and McDonalds to name just some, the full list is here

Not only have I enjoyed regular dividend cash payments tax free into my ISA, the amount I invested has also increased by around 18% again tax free! and what did I do, a little research, invested some money and waited patiently, these companies now work for me as I am invested in them all through this fund, amazing really, and all the time the growth compounds.

So, while I am typing this, in my own time, just relaxing, all these companies and employees are working hard and growing their business to pay me my share of the dividends and growth, in fact I feel privileged and actually quite lucky as I am now doing nothing towards it, incredible when you think about it like that, and you can do this too!

So what is a fund, a fund tracks the market it follows and owns the components of that market, for example I also own the FTSE100, so this fund owns a percentage of all the companies in the FTSE100 in proportion to their weighting, bear in mind that not all funds are created equally so please DYOY (do your own research)

What I can say, when it comes funds (not single shares) I only invest in passive funds which means there are no fees for active fund managers buying and selling all over the place with even more fees, so a passive fund for me, always beats a managed fund in spite of what the professional moneymen say, as they want to take as much as they can from you in fees, and I for one am not going there.

Think about it for a minute, if you have a fund that owns the whole of the FTSE100 why would you want to pay someone to manage it, crazy I tell you, this knowledge alone is worth subscribing and getting more honest unbiased thoughts from me, could help you avoid many of the pitfalls.

Funds were said to have been invented by John Bogle, who explains them very well in his book “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing” which was worth every penny, easy reading and I have read it many times over.

This is all part of the research you need to do to make your money work for you, if you don’t or can’t be bothered, it is unlikely you will be financially free before old age.

In addition to researching the latest Smartphone, Car, TV, Washing Machine, Broadband deal, you need to also research your money, as what is more significant than your future you with cash in abundance.

Happy reading

Until next time, keep going!

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