*This is a sponsored post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
John and I are in the process of buying our first house! It’s a 3 bed semi on the outskirts of Carlisle and we are very excited to have a place to call our own. After 8 years of renting flats near the city centre I can’t wait to have a garden and a driveway! Here’s a sneak peak of the garden..
The impending responsibility of owning a property is making me feel like a real grown up and pushing me to consider things I’ve put off in the past like life insurance and pensions.
At the moment the company I work for isn’t obliged to offer employee pensions (although this will change in the next couple of years) so I’ve been looking at other options. My first thought was to set up a direct debit and transfer a monthly sum to my cash ISA. This is a safe option which offers tax free savings of up to £15,240 and if you select an easy access ISA you’ll be able to withdraw your funds at any time. If however you’re looking for better returns and higher long term growth investment might be the way forward.
Nutmeg offers a simple way to manage your savings online. You can invest as little as £1,000 per fund for ISAs (plus £50 monthly contributions for funds under £5,000) or £5,000 for pensions. A single management fee of between 0.3 and 1% (including VAT) per year is charged giving you the transparency that is often lacking in the traditional wealth management industry. You can set up a portfolio in under 10 minutes and you can top up, transfer or withdraw your funds whenever you like. Each diversified portfolio is managed by a team of experienced investment professionals who choose sensible strategies for long term growth and won’t spend your money on hot tips or market fads.
You can set your risk level anywhere from 1 “Avoiding loss is the priority” to 10 “I’ll risk large losses for higher gains” and a globally diversified portfolio means your risk will be spread across a wide range of investments. You can view the overall results for each of the 10 risk-based portfolios. From its inception in October 2012 to 31st March 2015 the average return for a medium risk investment was 23.9% which sounds pretty impressive to me!
Nutmeg’s interface works using a slider system so you can explore different options and decide what will work for you. I really like the concept and the fact that Nutmeg tailors investments to your specifications. Of course no investment of this type is without risk so keep that in mind but this is an easy, accessible option for both new and experienced investors.