Update: 5 March 2019 – Unfortunately the interactive tool from Broker Compare – that’s discussed below – is no longer supported by that company, and thus is no longer available on Monevator. The good news is our comparison table is still there to guide you through the broker maze!

Working out the best online broker or platform1 to use in your investing can be frustrating.

Just when you have got your head around shares versus funds, corporate bonds versus James Bond, and you’re finally ready to start investing, you discover dozens of different brokers to choose from.

All have their own similar-but-different fee structures.

We have long kept track of the different broker platforms and what they charge via our fee comparison table.

But comparing the charges levied by say Hargreaves Lansdown with those of Interactive Investor can be fiddly work.

Details matter. Some brokers charge lower fees for trading but sting you with high withdrawals fees. Others offer cheap trading, but make additional annual charges for each different kind of account you open with them – once for an ISA and again for a SIPP. There may be entry and exit fees, too.

You also need to compare fixed annual platform fees – for instance £15 a quarter – with the alternative method of levying a percentage fee – say 0.25% year – on your investment pot. Which is more cost effective for you?

What’s more, the winner of this equation will probably change as your nest egg grows! You’ll need to run the numbers every few years to keep your costs as low as possible.

Get tooled up to compare investing platforms

If you find all this fun then you’re in the right place. We’re investing nutters around here.

But most people frankly do not.

Out in the wider world, people use interactive tools to compare things like insurance products and energy bills.

Well, that is now possible with investing platforms, too.

We’re hosting an interactive comparison tool created by our partners at Broker Compare. We hope it will help casual investors get their money onto a suitable investment platform with a lot less hassle.

In fact anyone who wants to hone in fast on the best potential brokers will find it a quick way to generate a shortlist of candidates.

True, if you want to work out precisely what you’ll pay – in your specific situation – you’ll always need to do the sums for yourself.

There are just so many quirks out there, and any tool needs to make a few assumptions. Only you know exactly how you plan to invest and why.

But for many people, getting a good idea of the best platform to use quickly is the most important thing.

They’d rather know approximately what they’re going to be charged than laboriously figure out the exact costs from a dozen or more competitors.

Compare the brokers and save hundreds of pounds

Monevator regulars love to debate the minutia of different platforms with all the passionate enthusiasm of trainspotters arguing about the best non-standard railway gauges found in the wilder mountainous regions of Europe.

And long may that continue. (You’re among friends here.)

But the average person has little idea of their broker’s fees – or how what they’re paying compares to the competition.

For these people, five minutes with a comparison tool could be a quick way to save hundreds or thousands of pounds.

So what are you waiting for?

• Try out the interactive broker comparison tool. [No longer available]

• Prefer to DIY? Check out the broker comparison table.

Note that just as with the price comparison websites we all use to compare energy bills or mortgages, Monevator may receive a payment from a broker that you visit or sign-up with via the table or tool. This does not affect the fees you pay – it’s made by the company to us for introducing you to their business.

Happy hunting – and let’s save some money!

1. We tend to use the words ‘broker’ and ‘platform’ interchangeably. A broker is a stock broker – a person or company who trades and holds investments on your behalf. The platform is their website that lets you see and adjust your investments. [↩]

Much is written about how to save: “You there, you reckless spendthrift, come here and read my secret formula that will turn you into a prudent accumulator of wealth.”

Far less time is devoted to the difficulties of staying the course.

What are the techniques that will enable you to stick to your savings goals through the long days ahead? The times when your entire being just screams out for a foam-plumed latte with an extra fancy shot? Or those new shoes? Or that shiny, new car? How do you deal with the urge to splurge?

You need a defense-mechanism, my friend (and I’m looking in the mirror here).

Two tactics make the difference for me:

1. The long-term goal
2. My monthly savings target

The long-term goal

Knowing where I’m going helps keep my eyes fixed on the distant horizon. When I can imagine how wonderful journey’s end will be, I don’t resent every heavy plod that carries me one step closer.

My initial goal was an emergency fund. Then it became paying off the mortgage double-quick.

Other popular goals include:

• A comfortable retirement
• Income supplement
• Property purchase
• The kids’ education

Without my goal I’d have nothing to fight for. No ultimate dream that makes today’s sacrifice worthwhile.

But it’s important that dream is defined. That it’s a concrete number I can hit. Vague notions of ‘financial security’ are too woolly and abstract to sustain a long-term commitment. If the goal isn’t defined then you can’t draw psychic sustenance from beating your numbers.

Many are the days that I go into work and steel myself with the thought that the trials ahead will bring me a step closer to my endgame, provided I stick to my saving goals.

Note: Choosing too many savings goals is as fatal as failing to define any. When the enormity of the task dwarves your resources, then defeatism and failure will surely follow.

Savings targets

Defining your goal means setting a target. My long-term goal – financial independence and early retirement – was initially a large and distant one. A big problem can only be beaten if you break it up into many smaller problems that can be picked off one-by-one.

Creating the opportunity to win a string of handsome victories is critical to building morale, momentum, and ultimate success.

Set yourself:

1. A yearly target
2. A monthly target

If I can save (and therefore invest) X every month and Y every year then I’ll hit my target in W years.

Targets may have a bad rap in the NHS, but I’d never stay the course without them.

Knowing I have to hit my monthly target electrifies every spending decision I make. Every decision now has a purpose:

• If I don’t splash out then I’ve made progress towards my goal.
• If I do, it’s because I really want or need the thing I’ve bought.

Crucially, the target makes me think things through. I no longer make thoughtless impulse purchases that amount to money down the pan. (Well, not often anyway).

Budget control

One tool that helps me stick to saving goals is my Budget_Control spreadsheet.

It’s very simple. The spreadsheet:

Adds up income, subtracts spending, and shows what’s left.

It also sets predefined monthly limits for spending in cash and on credit cards. Knowing what those limits are – and checking how I’m doing every week using online accounts – enables me to ease off the spending throttle when I’m having a bad month.

I use monthly direct debits to siphon off cash into savings accounts and to a regular investment scheme. The Budget Control sheet enables me to watch with pleasure as that amount grows in the ‘saved’ row.

As is often noted, you soon learn to live within your new means when cash is hived off automatically. Human inertia can work in your favour!

How to use the Budget Control spreadsheet: You can download the spreadsheet via the link above. The numbers already in the sheet refer to the spending targets set for credit cards and cash. Choose your own. The cash category covers ATM withdrawals, BACS transfers or debit card payments. Most of my spending is on cashback credit cards (paid off in full every month), so most outgoings are tracked by knowing these numbers. I’m not one for painstakingly totting up every till receipt. Regular bills are paid on direct debit.

Any spare money (the surplus category in the spreadsheet) also gets saved and ultimately invested. This is a movable feast that depends on how successfully I’ve fought spending on cash and credit cards that month.

The tension between trying to stay within the spending limits and the desire to generate a savings surplus creates the drive to stick to the plan.

Tracking my saving and spending also enables me to set realistic saving goals that are within my means. Progress relies on those handsome victories referred to earlier. Constant defeat would soon stall the project.

Don’t forget too that target-adjustment will probably be required along the way as the rising tide of inflation laps at all our saving sandcastles.

Take it steady,

The Accumulator

What caught my eye this week.

I would have had this post to you much earlier on Friday, but for consumerism. You see I got totally distracted trying to get the best out of my new Sage Barista Express:

Having done a barista training course a few years ago, I improbably fancied myself as pretty hot stuff with a coffee grinder.

I’ve enjoyed flat whites knocked out by a friend on this well-reviewed model many times, too.

But it turns out I didn’t know my friend as well as I thought I did!

I’ve discovered he’s great at making coffee – but perhaps more shockingly that he’s modest about it. (What other talents does he boast, I now wonder? Or rather does he not boast?)

Seriously, I know it takes a while to get the hang of DIY espressos on new kit, so I’m not too perturbed. It’s only eaten a couple of hours so far, and that includes washing the bits and bobs, figuring out how it fitted together, and collecting beans I spilled on the floor.

No, the other reason why I fell behind was because as soon this new toy finally arrived from Amazon, I went out for a three-hour hike around West London.

Did you sign for it, sir?

You see I’ve been in all week waiting for deliveries – and it drives me crazy.

I’m on edge all-day, until the deliveries do (or don’t) arrive.

A laid-back friend who doesn’t understand my hair-trigger control freak personality asked me what the big deal was.

“Imagine waiting all day to be slapped in the face,” I said. “You don’t know when it’s coming, but you will be slapped in the face. That’s me waiting for the door buzzer.”

It’s not even that I can’t do the social interaction bit. It’s worse: I usually talk the delivery person’s ear off. (A common failing among those of us who work from home.)

Rather it’s the waiting and uncertainty that kills me – and the unexpected and unscheduled state change.

Years before the Millennials I kept my mobile on silent always, for the same reason.

A totally unexpected phone call to my mobile feels like being tapped on the shoulder by a suddenly apparating supernatural nosy neighbour. I hate it.

Now at this point you’re either nodding along (a very few of you) or you’re aghast with incomprehension. Which is fine.

(I’ve said before when explaining why I invest actively and nearly everyone reading shouldn’t that I’m wired differently. I didn’t say it was easy!)

Economy class

Anyway, the reason I’m sharing these asides – and the rare from real-life picture above – is to give a quick update on my embrace of consumerism.

The story so far: You’ll remember I bought a flat, I still haven’t written up why, and I set about spending some of my 20-odd years of winnings (well, savings and winnings) to make it fancy.

This got off to a good start. I’ve always loved nice furnishings and so on – from afar. But by the middle of the hot summer I was bored of spending money.

I’d lost enthusiasm, I’d lost my girlfriend (she said she didn’t like my sudden interiors obsession, but perhaps she just didn’t like the sofa I finally selected?), and I’d lost (/spent) more money traded for matter than I’d spent on things in the previous two decades combined.

I didn’t even go crazy! It’s just that living like a graduate student even as your earnings multiply is pretty low-rent.

For most of that long era I used to opine to my more normally spendy friends that buying stuff only produced problems. Which in my experience was almost always true.

Stuff didn’t work, or you had to upgrade something else, or it broke, or you felt guilty, or you had to wait in for days to get it delivered, or you were worried it’d get nicked when finally you did get hold of it – or any one of a dozen other woes that people who buy stuff all the time think is just the way the world is.

Only two things hit the spot for me without fail when I splashed the cash. Black cabs – which I almost never took, and felt so luxurious in those pre-Uber days – and the first beer with two poppadoms and all the sauces and other gubbins.

Obviously I did a gazillion other things over the decades. I didn’t just taxi around London from curry house to curry house! And often it was money well spent.

But never reliably so.

Well, this whole flat buying and furnishing thing has proven my younger self right.

Through the keyhole

Don’t get me wrong. It’s coming along. It looks beautiful, to me if not my ex. I feel lucky to live among all these things I chose in my still-new flat, even while knowing luck is only part of it.

But, oh! I guess I secretly thought the universe would notice The Investor Is Finally Throwing Money At The Problem and the rules would change. But they haven’t.

Stuff comes broken. Trades people don’t show up. Some of them are great, but some are – well – yet to find their true calling. Deliveries don’t arrive. I made a final push to finish my flat before Christmas, and caned the Black Friday offers. But only three of the seven resultant purchases that were scheduled for delivery have actually made it here so far. A new record of rubbishness.

Coffee machines are harder to use than you expected. Analine leather sofas stain if you sneeze near them. Complete automatic watering systems require add-ons to water completely. Your boiler is already up for a service – and that’ll be £100+ with VAT please.

I feel sometimes like Robinson Crusoe, finally back on the mainland after a long sabbatical away catching fresh fish with his hands and brushing his teeth with a fragrant root. I can confirm 2018 has a lot of gorgeous stuff on offer – but as we all know it comes at a price and doesn’t really solve anything.

Still happy I did it, but pleased I’m mostly buying things that will last.

Once I’m done the hedonic treadmill is going back into storage!

Note: Yes, it’s an expensive coffee machine (though one of the cheaper good ones). I’ve always liked a few quality things in life, I’ve just tended to get them cheaply. I saved about half my income for 20 years, so while the Frugal Police are welcome to give me a caution, keep in mind that I wrote the (racier) pages of the book you’re throwing at me. 😉 And beware Buffett’s Folly.

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