Yvan Seth's Hole in the Internet

Recently I had reason to rank the funds available via a Hargreaves Lansdown Vantage SIPP by their TER. Of course, it isn't in HL's best interests to make this easy so I ended up having to work it out the hard way. I've compiled a list that is correct as of around Friday August 1st, a portion of this is below. What I was looking for was a list of funds with a "real" TER of 1.1% or less. To get "real" I'm calculating the max of HL's advertised TER and Annual Charge with their special magic additional charge factored in where it is applicable. HL add another 0.5%+VAT (0.5875%) to the AC for some funds, as far as I can see this mainly because they don't like people investing in index-linked funds.

Continue reading Hargreaves Lansdown Funds by TER.

"British Gas has raised the price of gas by a massive 35%, piling misery on to millions of customers."

I know the media is no stranger to hyperbole, but really? In the time of "credit crunch" and "mortgage crisis" I'd expect to be immune (they may not be exaggerated terms themselves, but they sure spawn many words of doom and gloom.) It seems I'm not actually desensitized to financial melodramatics however, I had to shake my head at this one (I'm a BG customer, through laziness, as opposed to love of them.)

Continue reading Piling misery?.