Vanguard or Hargreeves Lansdown?

[1houseandhome]

I'm starting with investing and was going to open a vanguard account- but I thought I should check if there's any difference between vanguard and hargreeves lansdowne?

I'm brand new to investing so just wanted something simple and secure. Thanks

I find vanguard easy to use, I went with it after reading some of the boards on here

Congratulations on being sensible and doing stuff I should have done decades ago.

Here's the guy I wish had been around to advise me all those years ago. If you click on "Playlists" he has some specific advice about Vanguard.

Boils down to fees, Vanguard are much cheaper which can save you quite a bit in the long run.

Good luck with your investments!

https://www.youtube.com/@DamienTalksMoney/videos

Vanguard - you can only invest in Vanguard funds. Bizarrely it's sometimes cheaper to invest through other platforms rather than direct. Vanguard are known for their reasonable fee structure.

HL - you can invest in a massive selection if funds

Look also at AJ Bell and Interactive Investor, all investment platforms like HL.

Money to the masses has great investment advice etc, also The Motley Fool.

Ah great thanks for your advice and replies I'll check out those links with a view to continuing with vanguard then - wish me luck!!

Good luck OP! Another cheap site is InvestEngine

I like Hargreaves Landsdown, they aren’t the cheapest but they do give good service, they also give you separate “Pots” within your Sipp for crystallised and uncrystallised funds, not many firms do this.

It’s helpful when you start to access your pension but you are still paying in. For example : I took a tax free lump sum so had to crystallise enough to give me the tfls amount I wanted - if you want £10k, you crystallise £40k, so the £30k left goes into your crystallised pot.

I wouldn’t want to be restricted to use only Vanguard funds even though I have VS80 within my Sipp.

I’ve used both Vanguard and HL. They are completely different - Vanguard is like a bus and HL a car. Vanguard is cheap and cheerful, with a very limited range of funds. HL is more expensive and with it you can customise your portfolio in whatever way you want, with a full range of funds and stocks and shares for you to choose from.

I prefer the HL website and for a while I enjoyed experimenting with different funds etc. But after a few years I decided to simplify everything and move across to Vanguard. It does exactly what I need of it at very low cost.

We moved all ours from HL to Vanguard. Both DC in their 20s use vanguard as well.

The key question is whether you want to pick and choose investments (and spend a lot of time monitoring them) in order to try to beat the market, or whether you want to minimise costs, and the risks of your chosen funds under-performing. For someone just starting out and with a long time horizon who may be at the beginning of their journey in terms of learning about investing, I'd suggest that Vanguard is an excellent option. Never underestimate the impact that investment costs can have on the size of your pot. HL is great if you only buy shares or investment trusts / ETFs, but if you are buying open-ended funds then there's a 0.45% platform charge that will eat into your returns, plus the funds themselves will cost around 0.6 - 1.0% on top.

I started investing in my 30's and stuck to passive investments for over a decade while I was busy with work / life generally and still learning about investing. (I added active accounts later.)

If you want to know more about the difference between active and passive approaches and investing generally, I recommend the Monevator site.

Sipp for crystallised and uncrystallised funds, not many firms do this

Rubbish, they are legally separate pots, so
ALL providers do this.

Not rubbish at all, they may well be separate at their end but not all providers show separate pots to their customers.
Charles Stanley don’t , I know this for a fact because DH has a part crystallised pension with them, his online account does not differentiate between the two.

Perhaps double check your ‘facts’ next time eh? 😉

Legally they know EXACTLY what is in each, they have to. In my 20’years as an adviser I have never ever had a separated pot. That’s a crap product, but feel smug if you like!

• Non, separated

I have investments with vanguard and find them easy to deal with and have fair charged

Vanguard is cheaper than HL but have a narrower range of funds. If you’re not trading regularly then the fund charges can be less of an issue and HL offer some good fee discounts on their most popular funds.

Personally I use HL as I like the fund selection and we tend to update our holdings only once or twice a year. You could also consider AJ Bell who offer a similar service to HL.

It is true that some providers do not on their customer facing system show the two pots separately, but of course they have to keep a tally of the % of the LTA you have used and from this the size of each “pot” can be extrapolated.

Justy make sure you get a modern provider.

I too like HL as I like to invest in specific companies not funds.