SSAS Guru:

I could not disagree more with Maxstream when he says that reading a magazine is better than getting advice, although it would be cheaper. You get what you pay for at the end of the day and if this is important to you you should seek advice as the returns you get are mostly determined by the diversifitacion of your fund choice.

Someone who writes in a magazine will have had the quality of their writing assessed over many years by their employer and by the readers. You can easily look up what they were writing about in the past. You can read the advice at your leisure and without pressure. It is easy to review many articles to find the people that seem more sensible or more suitable to your situation.

Mr Guru works in the industry and, like many IFAs, does not provide unbiased advice.

£700 seems steep to me for setting up an ISA, especillay as they have advised on the more complicated area of pensions for just £500. are there any other advisers who you could contact in your area? Did they take their fees from the pension ( they should have as 20% or 40%, depending on your tax band, will have been paid by the governmant though tax relief).

As maxstream said you can go direct but will pay 5% initial fees. There are some market leading companies which will pay commission to your IFA and still get 100% allocation rate (2.25% commision). Sterling, who are part of the Zurich Group, offer this and I see these regulary used by the IFAs I work with.

What was your risk profile? This is important as a portfolio planning tool can be used to build a portfolio of funds to match the required asset allocation for your personal risk profile. There are plenty of other companies such as Fidelity which will also offfer this but I would go back to your IFA and ask whether he would be willing to negotiate on their fees.

I could not disagree more with Maxstream when he says that reading a magazine is better than getting advice, although it would be cheaper. You get what you pay for at the end of the day and if this is important to you you should seek advice as the returns you get are mostly determined by the diversifitacion of your fund choice.

Good luck.

Any of the larger unit trust or investment trust companies will set up your stocks and shares ISA for free (they charge management fees of around 5% on entry plus 1% per year which you'll pay anyway, on top of the £700, if you use an intermediary). Doing it this way, you can also choose the funds that suit your attitude to risk rather than hoping that someone else interprets your attitude correctly.

Advice will be better and cheaper if you look at some of the established financial magazines at your newsagent.

I have asked my local IFA to set-up an equity ISA (portfolio?)to suit my needs (risk level etc). I'm new to this game. He said that his fee for doing this would be £700. I have already paid his company £500 for pension advice which I accept was good advice. The ISA suggestion was given as I'm currently paying £230 a month as AVCs into a company MPP pension.(I already pay 7% salary into MPP which is matched by my firm). He said that it would be better to put say £200/month into equity ISAs until my retirement (Im 52, retire at 66), as it will be accessible and also may perform better. Can anyone advise me on these issues please?