More of a WWYD - regarding these Shares?

[BeachBlondey]

Back in the early 2000's, me and my then DH were doing very well financially, and over the course of the previous 10-15 years, we had invested in staff Share plans with our employer Nat West. The schemes allowed you to pay monthly and then at the end of 5 years, the shares you received were usually worth way more than you had invested. Anyway, at one point they were worth circa £100k.

In 2008, there was obviously a market crash and me and DH also divorced. My half of the shares ended up being worth something like £5000, instead of the £50,000 they should have been worth.

I went through some really tough financial times after our split, because he was the high earner. I was only part time, on a low salary, and now my shares had crashed as well. I had 3 years of paying half of the mortgage on the old house (the marital home) that we couldn't sell, plus a new mortgage on a new much smaller home. All food was put on to credit cards and we had no treats. It was quite tough, but I held on to the shares, believing that they would bounce back eventually, and I might have to wait decades for this to happen.

Now we are 15 years on from that time. I have remarried and recovered financially. But, I still have these shares and I don't know what to do now. At one time I believed on this company SO much, because I worked there and the shares had been my only way of saving for so long. But I haven't worked there now for 10 years and maybe the blinkers are slipping.

The shares are now worth about £8,000 and I don't know whether to just throw in the towel, in case they fall again, or sit on them for the next 20 years hoping for some improvement (but can't see them ever getting back to their real value).

I am a risk averse person, and if I had £8k sitting in my bank account, there is no way in a million years that I would buy shares with that! The only reason I got involved in shares in the first place, is because they were staff plans and risk free.

WWYD? I do not need the money now. I would be selling them to avoid more losses. But of course, once I've sold them, I have to acknowledge that I have lost £42k, with no chance of changing that.

YANBU - sell the shares now in case you lose further

YABU - you don't need the money now, so hold on to them

Thanks for reading, sorry it was long!

You've got zero financial qualifications have you? Jeez....

2 of my friends who work(ed) at NatWest have still got theirs, as have I. I think we are all just living in hope that one day they'll increase in value - although I don't think they'll ever get to the sorts of top price you're talking about ever again. I thankfully don't have that many left as I had sold some of mine after the options were exercised but one friend had quite a substantial holding, so like you lost quite a lot on paper.

No-one can tell you what to do as none of us have a crystal ball, sadly. If you need the £8k now then sell them. If you don't then it's up to you if you want to gamble.

And as others have said you haven't lost the amount you've quoted as you didn't pay full price for them in the first place. And they were only worth £50k for a given time - a time in which you chose not to sell.

I think I had a similar set up with RBS shares when I worked there. It was buy 2 and get 1 free I think. They got to £20 each at one point. I don't think I have them any more. It's pretty much low level gambling to be fair

If you had £8k to invest now would you buy them? If not, sell them.

Lots of very interesting points here, thank you. Dividends vary, a few hundred at most.

Our stocks and shares ISAs are doing well at the moment. I’d sell and reinvest.

No, definitely not! I think this was my lightbulb moment when I asked myself this the other day!

No I don't have a stocks and shares ISA. Might look in to this. Which cash ISA pays 3%? Mine only pays 1.5%

Ours was nationwide but much better ones out there.

Definitely,why not try both if you are worried put 4 grand into stock's and shares and 4ninto cash ISA.
Just don't every go with one company again.

I had some m and s share's years ago when they were about 6 each and they took a dive and I'm glad I sold them on the up part of the big dive!

Index funds, generally America centric m

Clearly if you wouldn’t buy them now for £8k you don’t believe they will go up much.

You should sell them and if you still want to invest that £8k then buy an index tracker, such as the S&P500 which has averaged almost 10% a year for 60 years.

I think you need to think that this money from the shares is dead. Dead in the fact you've not had the money, it's still just sitting there.

So if it was me I'd get a figure in my head to what they need to be before you cash them out or cash them out now and stop worrying.

Personally I'd leave them until you absolutely really need them.

I would put it in a stocks and shares ISA in a fund - so more than one company usually looooads in each fund but you have to check the fact sheets.

if you are looking at an ISA, then look at Nutmeg or Vanguard for a basic tracker that follows the overall stock market and has LOW FEES. Low annual fees are one of the most important features to look at, because even a small fee adds up over time.

if you want to be very cautious & can do the paperwork, then sell the Natwest shares gradually (£1K at a time) and buy the ISA gradually (£1K at a time) over several months because that will average out any day-to-day fluctuations in the stock market.

They can also be deceitful. I'm an accountant (for 40 years now!), and have had small business clients with major problems with Natwest over all that time.

Back in the 80s, it was their "business development loans" where the manager (remember them) would con, sorry, persuade people with existing loans or overdrafts to convert them into new BDLs with the promise of repayments being "only" £x per month usually a lot less than their existing loan, which seemed remarkably cheap and were very popular. What wasn't explained properly was the ruinously high interest rate and that the loan period was much longer, typically 5 or 7 years, so the business ended up paying a huge amount more over the life of the loan. Then that same manager would suggest another new BDL loan to repay the first and advance more a couple of years later - but then the period was even longer and the first loan was "paid off" early incurring a hefty early settlement fee which was rolled into the new loan, so the business owner never realised what was going on. We saw it time and time again - totally deceitful and made worse because with them being fixed rate/fixed repayment loans, the client never got a statement showing how they'd been conned. We had to work it out when doing their profit & loss account and balance sheet and when we told clients, they were horrified!

By the 90's such practices had been outlawed so NatWest managers needed new wheezes to meet their targets, so they'd encourage small businesses to take out huge loans to "invest" in their businesses, i.e. buy equipment, buy stock, etc or even buy premises or buy other businesses. Money was "apparently" no object for NatWest customers, and they barely bothered checking affordability etc. When things turned bad and the client couldn't make the repayments, they'd sweep in and force receivership, using their "tame" liquidators, who'd arrange for assets to be sold at crazy low amounts, funnily enough, just enough to pay the the liquidators costs and the bank loan balances - funny that, literally never anything left over for the other creditors. I had a couple of clients with multiple business types, and different managers pulled the same stunt of "encouraging" them to sell off the viable parts of the business with promises of letting the client keep the money to help the other parts survive. In both cases, literally the moment the money from the sale of the business part hit the bank account, the bank froze the accounts and forced the business to stop trading - again, funnily enough it was usually just enough to pay off their loan/overdraft. If it had happened just once, I'd have given them the benefit of the doubt, but to happen twice with different managers/different branches, it must have been widespread policy.

After that, I've since told clients to stay away from Nat West, at least when wanting overdrafts or loans and explained why. Similar things have happened since with new clients who joined my firm with existing Natwest debt, or clients who didn't have a choice, i.e. where Natwest were the only bank willing to lend. They've really not changed at all and I wouldn't trust them as far as I can throw them!

I sold the last of my Barclays sharesave shares a couple of years ago when they cancelled the dividend just as the returns were looking up.
I made some serious profit on mine over the many years I worked there but did make a loss on that last tranche. The market price was about £5 (down from £7+) when I acquired them for £2.50 so I decided to hang on but they went down to 50p.
I did sell half when they went back up to £3.70 and bought a car but then they dropped to around £2 and stayed there. I eventually sold at £2.11.
They were held electronically by Capita and they had full details of the acquisition cost.

@Kazzyhoward

Isn't that beyond atrocious.

People "used to " trust banks and their Bank managers!

Absolutely appalling.