Banger of an investment
Now could be the moment to go all in on crocs:
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Not since they sponsored Robert Neal then?
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I’m not a financial advisor, but I do work for a stocks and shares trading platform…so, this is what relevant knowledge I have.
If you haven’t already, set up a pension and keep plugging away at it… Can’t speak specifically for the UK tax system, but generally, it’s basically tax-free savings. It compounds over time and can be really lucrative after a couple of decades.
AFAIK with ISAs you can invest £20k per year tax free, which you should max out to the best of your ability.
Investments - all of this works similar to investing in a pension, but a pension I guess is more hands-off, while with investing, you decide what companies, ETFs, etc. to buy into.
If you can afford a large lump sum, like £10k, then to buy shares, bonds or ETFs (exchange traded funds, basically a pie of shares made up of different companies) or bonds or similar, you can use a marketplace, aka broker, like Degiro, Etoro, Webull, Trading 212, etc. Even digital banks like Revolut and N26 will let you invest in stocks, shares, ETFs, crypto, etc, so it’s really accessible these days.
Now it’s all well and good plonking 10K into anything, but not adding to it over time won’t really help. Some shares and ETFs will go down as well as up. Buying new shares/ETFs every month compounds over time, so a 2% daily rise on £10k = £200, but after a few years adding to that initial £10k, imagine it’s now £100k and that 2% is £2000.
So taking your £10k and assuming 10% growth over the year (a fair estimate for SPY500), adding £250 per month over 25 years, it grows to £450k. That’s called dollar/euro/pound cost averaging and it’s basically buying a regular amount of financial thingies per month. Over that 25 years, I’d assume your earnings go up and you can afford to put some more in each month.
Plug any figures into this compounding calculator and see how you go - https://www.nerdwallet.com/calculator/compound-interest-calculator
The obvious ETF to invest in is SPY500, aka Standard & Poor’s 500. S&P are the gold standard for financial knowhow and are the same people who decide how important or reliable an economy is. SPY500 is like the FTSE100, so it’s the top 500 companies in the US, whereas FTSE100 is the top 100 in the UK. You can invest in that one for around $600 per share right now.
Other financial institutions like Vanguard, Blackstreet, etc. have their own flavours of the SPY500 and as long as you get an accumulator / ACC fund which reinvests the dividends back in, you’ll see more growth. Some do go down… I thought I’d be great lad and put a few hundred into a green energy ETF which has been on a steady slide down to -50%, which despite my great hopes, I should probably sell and cut the loss.
Now with shares, you can also invest in any of your favourite companies, football clubs, etc. I started on this a few years back and in my 3rd or 4th month, I bought 4x Microsoft shares which instantly tanked. Meanwhile the Apple shares I got rose month on month and I felt like Gordon Gecko. Totally ignored those cheap Nvidia shares though… 
All well and good, then I lost my job and didn’t even open the trading app for a year. Turns out those MS shares bounced back and were then up about 15% or so. Not even enough to cover a month’s living expenses, but a good example of how markets change and are subject to fluctuate.
Use a site like Tradingview to get a good overview of how a company, fund, ETF, etc. has done over recent years. 2 main obvious dips are in March 2020 (Covid) and April 2025 (Trump’s Tariffs).
For me right now, crypto is a ponzi scheme and hugely volatile. I was so late to the party on that one and despite pumping my Christmas bonus into Bitcoin (50%), Ethereum (10%), Litecoin (10%), Solana (10%), Ripple (5%) and Tron (5% - never heard of it, but I loved Tron Legacy…), they all seemed to be at all time highs and dropped down about 50% in the past few months and are only now getting back to a similar level. Again, with this, you’ve got to be prepared to lose everything on any crypto coin you “invest” in.
Day trading, shorts trading, options, futures, is way over most people’s heads, do not get involved!
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Nice post @ciaran , I’m no expert either but all 100% spot on.
Whatever you do, don’t gamble your whole pot on one investment or stock or ETF. Always make sure you spread the risk.
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Reconsiders Marks trading knowledge and personal Patreon account…
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I gave up on day trading after 4 years. It’s incredibly hard to be consistently profitable. Might try again in the future. Investing is considerably easier.
Thanks for such a comprehensive reply. Great breakfast reading!
I’ll look at it all in more detail but this is a helpful starting point. I’ve definitely missed the boat with crypto and most meme coin stuff just feels no different to gambling tbh so I’ll give that a miss, but I’ve started having a go with Trading 212. Nothing substantial, just £10/£20 here and there to get an idea of how it works - they did a free £40 worth of stock the other month for new members (+£3 lets go).
My parents used Foresters for like 30 years and saw pretty good returns, so I’ve been thinking I might just speak to someone there as well and maybe they can advise further on stocks and shares ISAs.
Couple of things worth pointing out about pensions…not financial advice I’m a moron, don’t trust me, etc…
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Investing and pensions are the same thing, a pension is just a tax wrapper. Workplace pensions are less flexible than a personal pension (known as a SIPP) but they are still just investments in the stock market.
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With a workplace pension you get employers contributions. You generally get a top up from your employer on anything you put in. That means if you pay in £100 and your employer adds £20 you also get tax relief (basic rate 20% for example) so in total you would have £125 to invest. If you had invested with taxed income you would only have £95 to invest AND you will pay CGT on gains. That’s where the big compounding advantage of pensions becomes apparent - you are actually investing XX% more and getting more back when you do it through a pension.
So when you take those two things - no tax, and extra money from the employer - it makes pensions the best way for ‘most’ people to invest. If you invest with money you have been paid out by your employer, you have already been taxed on it and you will be liable for tax on any gains you make. So you are being taxed multiple times making it much harder to make a profit on your investments.
Something worth considering if you want to be more active with your investing through a pension is the possibility of setting up a SIPP (self-invested personal pension). With a SIPP you can log into an online account or call a broker and buy and sell shares using the money you have paid into your pension. It is possible that your employer will be ok with switching your pension payments and their topup directly into your SIPP.
If they don’t, for some people it might be worth keeping the employer pension and opening a separate SIPP just for investing, and asking your employer to make extra payments into that for you, separately to your existing employer pension. That is much more tax efficient than investing directly in stocks with money you have already been taxed on and will pay CGT on.
ISAs are another tax wrapper and you can take the money out at any time. You can invest with them just like you can in your pension. There is a long term tax advantage to investing through your pension over ISAs for most people if you have to choose one or the other, but ISAs are more flexible. You might choose to do your investing through your ISA, you can also withdraw from it any time you like. You can buy and sell stocks and shares in your ISA.
If you are interested in investing, I would advise you to get as much money into a SIPP pension as you can. You can then start investing with the money you have in there and you won’t be taxed on any gains until you start to withdraw it. You can withdraw 25% tax free when you hit pensionable age and the rest is taxed as income when you draw it down over your remaining years (government most likely wil fuck with this before you come to retire).
Look out for fees - most of the SIPP/ISA platforms will charge fees for trading, managing your account, etc… Funds are listed on these platforms and they also charge fees, Vanguard is popular because it’s a cheap all market tracker, Fundsmith/Blue Whale/etc are managed funds where you have brokers working for you with the aim of beating the returns of market trackers. You can easily lose thousands in fees if you don’t pay attention. While there are platforms like HL you can buy funds through, they are basically resellers so you pay the HL platform fee AND the fund’s fee. You can get the cheapest possible rate by buying funds directly at source, there is a strong argument for just dumping your entire pension allowance into a Vanguard tracker directly at https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/ where you will pay the lowest fees possible with no platform fees.
I have about seven workplace pensions that I have acquired since I was 20, a SIPP, and have been topping up my ISA, my wife’s ISA, and my kid’s ISAs every year. My SIPP (where I choose my own investments) has massively out-performed the workplace pensions, other than the government one I have which was final salary linked. It’s worth seeing if you can transfer old pensions that are doing shit into a SIPP so you can manage it yourself, but leave any salary linked ones alone…you won’t get a better deal than those!
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Legendary response, nice one Jimo.
When it comes to any of these, both pensions and investments, forking out for a local professional financial advisor is money well spent.
Agreed! We got one who consolidated a load of historic work pensions me and my wife had into a couple of SIPPs which are now doing nicely. He also put us on to the the fact that you can use up previous years tax free allowance for pension contributions, that means if you stick a load of money in your SIPP one year and the government will give you up 20% of that back to make up for the tax relief you should have got if you’ve not maxed out all your previous years allowances. So if you have a £10k lump sum, and paid it in to a SIPP, the government will give you at least £2k (depending on your tax band). I think you’re allowance is like £20k per year of tax free contributions to your personal pension per year going back 5 years. I’m probably doing a shit job of explaining that but it was worth the fee alone.
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All this investment is all well and good but aren’t we due another big crash?
I wish I had something spare to invest 
*completely my own fault as I am properly shit with money
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I think the theory is that you should think of a crash as a sale on shares. Keep putting more money in because you’ll be buying more for your money as share prices fall. Then, when the share price recovers, you’re quids in. Crashes are only a bad thing if you’re needing to cash in your investments during the crash. This is why, as you get closer to needing to cash in, you move your investments away from shares to something safer/stable like bonds. In the long run, the stock markets have always gone up over time since time began. And if they don’t then your shares are the least of your worries*
*That’s what ‘experts’ I’ve heard on podcasts and books have said
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I find that whole world a bit disgusting to be honest. But I’m aware that’s just the way it is and it’s not going to change
If you’re talking insider trading and Trump and his mates profiteering from knacking the economy on purpose with tariff news etc then totally agree. But I think for Joe Average just trying to survive in old age, riding the waves of macro economics that you have no influence over isn’t necessarily immoral.
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Best thing to remember when you are investing is the old phrase ‘time in the market beats timing the market’.
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That’s the biggest problem, but like we were saying if you have a pension you are already investing. Or rather, someone is investing on your behalf.
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I get that, I feel the same way. The problem is that if you have money and you don’t invest it the government will just take it away from you, through inflation and taxes.
If you think about it like this, an average house in the UK cost £2,263 in 1960. If you had kept that £2,263 under your bed it would be worth £2,263 today. If you kept it in the bank at 3% it would have grown to about £15k, but you would owe tax on the gain. If you had bought the house it would be worth around £280,000, no tax on your primary residence. £2,263 invested in gold in 1960 would have bought you 181 ounces, worth around £353,028 today. If you had opted for gold coins (bullion) you’d have no CGT to pay, but you would have to pay tax if you bought gold bars. And best of all, according to AI if you had invested £2,263 in the stock market since 1960 it would be worth approximately £508,875, if that was in a pension then no tax on the gain.
So it’s kind of obvious that like it or not, you have to play the game a little bit.
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And of course the best time to start investing was 30 years ago. And second best time is today.
Like Jimo said, don’t try to time the market. Just get in and keep putting in.
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