Many readers will know that we have been quiet on the Newsletter front for the past 2 months. The reason is simple, we've been hard at work putting the final touches to a book we've written on SIPPs (Self Invested Personal Pensions).
The book's basic premise is fourfold -
- Continuing to find the right stocks or funds to invest in over many years is actually very difficult, regardless of what many in the financial markets would have you believe.
- Many don't realise the true impact that costs play when running a long term investment portfolio. For example if you can save just 1% a year and invest that saving back into the market and compound over 10-20+ years the overall positive impact on returns can be tremendous
- Hundreds of billions of pounds/Dollars/Yen/Euros in long term portfolio money is now managed passively and not actively. The difference is simple, a passive fund doesn't think, rather it matches a market performance with associated very low annual running costs. Let everyone else beat themselves up trying to 'out-perform' the market, better in my opinion to just match the market performance
- You don't need exceptional performance to make decent returns over the long run (10-20+ years). If somebody were to offer me an 8% guaranteed return every year on my SIPP I'd bite their hand off when accepting.
The SIPP book therefore offers a simple, logical but extremely effective strategy that anyone, even if they have little experience of the markets, can use to run their SIPP. And the reason for having the real potential to beat the professional money managers is not because we pick better stocks or investments, rather because the costs that the professionals charge will always mean a drag on long term performance.
I'm now running my personal SIPP with yearly management charges of around 0.5% whereas I would estimate most SIPPs are being run with charges in excess of 1.75% and some at a ridiculous 3% or more.
Yes, 1%, 2% or 3% doesn't seem like much but if you're serious about your pension money sit down and work out the real effect high costs will have on your portfolio, and if indeed your SIPP is actually getting any value for money.
Special Discount For LearnMoney.co.uk Readers
The cost of the book is normally £25 including a 104% money back guarantee (the extra £1 is the postage cost if you want to return it).
But we're offering it for £20 (including P&P) for LearnMoney.co.uk subscribers only with a 105% money back guarantee for the return postage costs. Put simply, if you don't like the book send it back for a no fuss refund.
More information can be found at this website SIPPBook.co.uk which at present is only in skeleton form. Over the next few months we're going to publish much more content on SIPPs and managing long term portfolios in general.
Get a FREE Copy
For the next 6 months we're going to be giving away two free copies every month to the first 2 readers who email us on this address - news@learnmoney.co.uk. Good luck.
