I stipulation some suggestion on ISA's?
Hi I have roughly speaking 9k to put away and save.Its money I sooner or later hope to put towards a mortgage so dont want to go putting it into something that have risk as I would rather own a house.
Would an ISA be a good conception?
Or should I put a little into some investments?
How does an ISA work and what money would I capture back?
Actually any info you can pass would be good as I havnt a clue.
Oh also I love you americans but would prefer English direction unless you know the UK rules etc.
thanks
Answers: There are two kind of ISA. A full ISA you can invest 7,000 in any given financial year, but this money will be invested and exposed to the stock open market. The other kind of ISA is a Mini ISA or Cash ISA and you can put within 3,000 in any financial year and is primarily a savings statement that you do not pay tariff on. So if the interest rate advertised is 5.5% later you get 5.5% annually on your 3K. Most sandbank accounts advertise the rate earlier tax so you don't in fact get that amount, you requirement to look at the net interest amount.
You can put 3,000 in a Mini Cash and the remaining 4,000 within a Stocks and Shares ISA.
You have to consider what your attitude to risk is, as any investment to be exact exposed to the Stock Market can go down so you may invest your 9K but extension up with 6K if you are unlucky. Share base investments are usually long term (15 year +)
I would suggest that as you hold a plan for your money and that your need for positive is actually slightly short term (you will be using it toward a house surrounded by a few years) then you should put 3K within a Cash ISA right away and then you can put another 3K contained by on March 6 when the financial year changes over. That take care of 6K of your money. Put the rest surrounded by the best possible interest rate bank details you can find.
The following websites will give you info on the best rates out within for both savings accounts and Cash ISAs
An ISA is much like peas in a pod as any other savings book narrative, with the exception that you don't money tax on any interest earn. It is no risk saving - you cannot acquire less out than you put contained by, and access to your money does not require you to give discern.
The government sets a constrict on the amount you can invest in an ISA contained by any one Income Tax Year. I believe the current figure is lb3000. But, beware, if you be to put lb3000 in on April 6th, and next withdrew lb2000 on April 7th (unlikely, but possible), you would not be entitled to put together any more deposits until the beginning of the subsequent Tax Year (April 6th again). Hope that make sense.
In short, an ISA is a out of danger and convenient way of good for something, with the benefit of have interest paid gross.
I wouldn't recommend any lofty risk investments, if you're relying on the money to put towards a mortgage, particularly since the Stock Market is fundamentally volatile at the moment.
Good luck
Hope these links will be of help.
http://www.smile.co.uk/servlet/ContentSe...
http://www.everyinvestor.co.uk/compariso...
Happy positive :)
What has the increase in the value of the S&P 500 been over the last 7 years?
Answers: Edward is correct about the index values but forgets the dividends. I don't know the precise numbers, but the S&P 500 has had a dividend yield in the range of 1.4 to 2.0% over those years.
If you automatically reinvest those divs. in more shares, this helps quite a bit when the index declines down to 800 or 900, as the reinvestments buy more shares when the shares are cheaper.
So you would have a modest gain after those 7 years, though not a lot.
Today (Jan 24, 2008) the S&P 500 closed at 1,352.07.
Seven years ago (Jan 24, 2001) it closed at 1,364.30.
Therefore, over the last seven years the value of the S&P 500 declined by 12.23.
For source of above data click on the link, below.
How good or bad is XM satellite stock investment?
Answers: Your best best is to get an annual report and review the risks involved.
XMSR performed very poorly during 2007 and the company lost a decent amount of money; analysts project losses for this year as well on only modestly increasing revenues:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ae?s=XMSR
I would look elsewhere to invest in a media or technology stock and avoid XMSR, too much of a dice roll.