There are a lot of very good US-based per­sonal finance blogs around, but some­times the infor­ma­tion given is dif­fi­cult for a UK reader to under­stand as the terms used are com­pletely alien to us.

One of the newer addi­tions to my RSS reader is Plon­kee Money — a site I found when search­ing for a US-UK per­sonal finance trans­la­tor. Plonkee’s UK-US com­par­i­son post is now a year old and is still vis­ited reg­u­larly when I for­get what a term means.

Roth IRA = Stocks and Shares ISA
Roth IRAs and Stocks and Shares ISAs are sim­i­lar invest­ments but there are sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences in the rules in each scheme.

Being noto­ri­ously dif­fi­cult to under­stand, Plon­kee is now — in the build up to the new finan­cial year — pro­duc­ing a com­pre­hen­sive intro­duc­tion to Stocks and Shares ISAs — a cru­cial item in your invest­ment armoury. Whether you’re new to ISAs or fancy brush­ing up on your knowl­edge for the com­ing year, this is look­ing like an impor­tant read.

  • part 1: all about you – why you want to invest, and how much money you have to play with
  • part 2: all about risk – suc­cess­ful invest­ing means always being able to sleep at night
  • part 3: all about invest­ments – the types of invest­ments that you can put into ISAs
  • part 4: all about asset allo­ca­tion – how to decide which mix of invest­ments is right for your ISA
  • part 5: all about funds – nar­row­ing down your choices
  • part 6: all about providers – get­ting the best deal for the money
  • con­clu­sions – what’s been cov­ered, and what to do next