Holly's Blog: Dust off your Dicky Bow!! It's our 2022 Awards!!!....
11 Feb, 2022
This week we are rolling out the digital red carpet and announcing our 2022 Best Buy winners in a flurry of excitement. Put on your tuxedos and tiaras and join our worthy winners in an outpouring of tears and thankfully non-existent acceptance speeches.
With just over 7 weeks left this tax year, do you have any money you were thinking of contributing to an ISA or a pension before April 5th? If so – here is some food for thought. Please share with family and friends who you think could use some help.
ISAs – who we think are the best all-rounders
We spent 2 months testing over 30 providers. We phoned them up. Did stuff in the apps. Looked at costs and charges. Read investor reviews and scoring. Checked out their research. Tried to trade. And generally put them through their paces.
We decided that 7 firms were worthy winners of our 2022 Best Buy ISA award. With the truncated Holly view below!
AJ Bell Youinvest – a good all-rounder; fair charges; probably slightly better for those with some experience; great for pensions too.
Fidelity – strong research; lots of supporting content; OK on charges; good for those keen to learn.
Hargreaves Lansdown – still has the edge on ease of use, service and things not breaking! ‘Tis pricey – but if you are impatient and think you get what you pay for – they are still damn good.
Moneybox – lovely starter ISA for those who can’t be bothered, have relatively small amounts or don’t want to wade through graphs and gobbledygook.
Nutmeg – good ready-made options for less-confident and busy people; decent app; nice sustainable options.
Vanguard – solid; huge and respected global player; low-cost; dependable; nothing fancy, and for those who think simple is classy and good.
Wealthify – lovely to use; good app; nice starter options.
And what about a DIY pension, folks?
Some additional and different faces here. With slightly different criteria to the ISAs, we modelled this based on slightly larger balances, how the product supports people before and after retirement, and reviewed the service and content support with pension-specific issues.
Our 2022 Best Buy Pension winners (not already named above) were:
Aviva – because some people want a household brand with a solid feel, and some easy ready-made options – nothing too fancy or scary.
Interactive Investor – for more-confident investors with pension pots in excess of £50,000 – hard to beat on cost.
PensionBee – a lovely easy choice for anyone thinking “I really must do something about those little pensions scattered amongst past employers, but I can’t be bothered”.
All Best Buy Pension winners below:
One thing we’ve learned is that people like and want very different things. Our Best Buys are all-rounders. We also recognised providers which we felt were best for Junior ISAs (parents – each kiddy has a rather unbelievable allowance of £9k each year!) and Lifetime ISAs (under 40s - saving for a flat?); sustainable investors or people wanting help with ready-made cleaner/greener accounts; best apps for those on the go; lowest cost choices for those who want to pay as little as possible…..and best for share traders. The people who think that funds are for wimps!
Ooof. How much excitement can you have in one week, you ask!? Well it doesn’t stop here. I am taking five 14-year-old boys Go Karting at the weekend. That, my friends, is how I roll. Step aside Lewis Hamilton, and watch how it’s done, baby!
Have a lovely weekend!
Holly
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