To sell or not to sell

[Roominmyhouse]

For the last 6 years I’ve been buying shares through my work for the company I work for. You can’t sell them for 5 years (unless there is a life event). The first ones matured last year but the value dropped as they are in euros and I think that was due to brexit/Covid. The value has increased again and they are now just over double what I paid for them. It’s not huge amounts, I paid £500 and they are now worth just over £1k. I don’t need the money for anything right now but I’m not sure whether to sell them now and put the money into my savings account or just leave them as they are. My next lot mature in July but aren’t worth as much yet. I don’t know much about all this so don’t know whether to take the money out now while I’ve doubled it?

If you don't need the money for anything then I'd probably leave it where it is, you can always keep an eye on it and take it out anytime.

Do you buy these shares from your gross pay so there's no income tax on them? My husband has a similar scheme through his job, if so I'd advise putting a bit more in if you can afford it, its easy money and 500 a year is only 41 a month.

It depends. No-one knows. Obviously you know your business and might have an idea as to whether it's likely to grow in the coming years, or might face threats.

Taking extreme examples. Imagine you worked for Fever Tree in the beginning. Their share price was initially about 50 p. It's been as high as about £35 so anyone getting in at the beginning would have seen massive gains. A year ago it dropped down to under a tenner, and it now bumping around £20-25 a share, so huge variations.

Lloyds Bank is another high profile company that's seen huge variations and pre 2007 was around £5 a share, but now seems consistently around 30-40 p, so anyone who's had shares for ever in them has probably lost over 90% of their money and might never see the price rise to anything like what it was in the past. But if they sell now, they've definitely lost the money.

In short, unless the £500 gain is a life changing amount of money for you right now, I think I'd leave them as shares.