Any advice on getting started with Mutual Funds?

[billybob4eva]

I have about 20k to invest. I'd like to put 4k in to a lifetime ISA to get the benefit of that, and the rest I think I'd like to invest in mutual funds.

The trouble is I don't really know much about it and am fairly risk averse so any advice would be much appreciated.

After my initial investment I can continue to invest a few hundred pounds each month and potentially another lump sum once a year.

I'd be very grateful for any thoughts

Podcast: How To Choose A Multi Asset Fund
Pick a fund that is as global as possible, as low cost as possible.
If you want a combination of equity and bonds, then Vanguard Lifestrategy or Blackrock MyMap are good to look at. If you want 100% equities, then Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap is quite popular.

Keep things really simple whilst you learn about investing. What funds you can buy will depend on the Lifetime ISA provider and ISA provider that you use. I would generally say to choose the fund(s) first and then see which provider platforms offer those. You may find your Lifetime ISA needs to be with AJ Bell, or Hargreaves Lansdown, perhaps Moneybox app (there are very few providers of S&S Lifetime ISA), whereas for ISA you have more choice of providers so could start with Vanguard Investor if using a Vanguard fund.

If you want to read some books then these two would be good to start with:

The Meaningful Money Handbook - Pete Matthew
This covers budgeting, insurance and investing basics. Really easy to understand. Written by a UK Financial Planner. The podcast link is from one of his many popular podcast episodes.

The Simple Path To Wealth - JL Collins
This is written by an author in the USA so some terminology is different but it is the condensed version of his blog (so you could read that instead) about how he would teach his daughter to invest, using a mutual fund - in their case VTSAX (which is US total stock market).