Trading 212 - beginner advice please!

[sortyalife]

Hey!

I am trying to understand more about finances and be more smart with my money.
I am overpaying mortgage, and I have an emergency fund sitting in an easy access ISA.

I have £200 a month which I was going to continue to put into the ISA however now considering doing a stocks and shares ISA (with trading 212) and using £100 a month towards that and £100 to keep going on my emergency fund.

So is it that simple? Open the ISA - choose a “pie” , add monthly money and leave it be??

Does this make any sense as I am starting with small amounts and not putting a lump sum in there?

any advise appreciated.

Bookmarking to follow as also interested.

I learned about the stock market at the age of 43, and now I invest regularly with trading 212 and vanguard. Whilst I am glad I aggressively paid off my mortgage, I wish I had had a bit more financial knowledge and been less scared of "investing" earlier in life.

My advice would be to choose ETFs (exchange traded funds) like the S&P500 or a low cost global ETF rather than picking your own stocks.

This is a low maintenance approach and spreads your risk ie not putting eggs all in one basket.

Trading 212 is good because there are no platform fees and you can buy fractional shares for as little as £1 even if a full "share" in that fund costs a lot more.

Downsides are no telephone based help and just a vague sense that they are a bit less established and panic when the app bugs out and it looks like your account has vanished (it hasn't - I take regular screenshots).

Vanguard have platform fees and are much more restrictive in what you can invest in - this is not always a bad thing as there's nothing really weird or high risk - but they also have telephone based help if you have any issues and just feel more solid if you are a bit nervous.

Instead of a cash isa and a S&S isa, just have the latter and put half the cash in a Short term money market fund like Royal London, it pays the inter bank rate of interest.

Then for an investment for the long term, dripping £100 a month into a cheap global index tracker is the way to go.
I put £50 into Fidelity index world for my Grandson and after 4 years it’s over £3k and up 38%. I’ll keep it going till he’s 18.

Nothing wrong with Trasding212 stocks ISA. I would suggest investing in a All-world/global ETF such as FWRG (there are others). This means you are not putting all your eggs in one basket. I'm not a fan of their pies but I know others like them.

The good thing about trading 212 is that you can switch your funds between cash isa and stocks and shares isa as many times as you like at the click of a button. So just open a cash isa and once the money is in then you can move some of it to a stocks and shares isa. They let you play around with fake money first if you want to before you actually invest.

Initially I'd just open a vanguard or blackrock tracker ready made pie (personally I prefer vanguard). Be aware that if you buy UK shares outside of an ETF you will pay stamp duty even within an ISA. Once you get more comfortable with the process and the risk then you can branch out if you want to. At the end of the day buying and selling shares is just gambling unless you have insider information (which is in most cases illegal) so there will always be risk. You just have to look at Meta in the past week.

Be aware that there is a LOT of talk about a bubble about to burst so you need to be in it for the long term. If you need the money then think very carefully about whether a stocks and shares ISA is right for you. You're likely to get 2-3 times the return in the long run on average but you could loose it, particularly if you know you have to pull it out at a certain point.