Should I increase my monthly payment into my Stocks & Shares ISA? Or diversify?

I am a 35 year old woman working part time on a reasonably good salary. I have recently taken out a Stocks & Shares ISA with Wealthify (from reading the recommendations on Boring Money) where I pay in £40 per month. However, I am wondering if I should be doing more? Should I be diversifying and using more than just Wealthify by also investing in Vanguard or Investec, for example? Or is it better to increase the amount into Wealthify? Thanks!

Dear Holly,

Well done for starting to invest. Every little helps and it’s great to hear you’ve started to do something for your future self, as well as for today.

Can you do more? That depends on your financial position of course. You don’t want to invest everything, and then find you’ve tied up so much money that either you’re having to sell when markets are down, or take on (expensive!) debt to replace, say, a washing machine that blows up or car that needs repair.

But if you have the money spare, then do, yes. The more you do now, the harder that money will be able to work over the coming years. All of which should be to your benefit…

In terms of diversification, though… I’m not sure that you need to worry about holding money with different platforms for now.

Wealthify and Vanguard use mostly passive investments to get your money into the stock market. You will therefore have gained very good market diversification at a very low cost already. Adding a second online platform to Wealthify will only increase your administration - and clog up your app dashboard on your devices.

I would therefore suggest that there is little downside in concentrating your efforts on maximising the savings in one place, certainly for now. And for probably at least the next five years. Unless something amazingly different comes along, or you get an unexpected and decent windfall, I’d get your monthly direct debit into the Stocks & Shares ISA as high as you sensibly can, and then forget it’s even there.

Consistency is by far the most important, and influential, secret to building wealth!