#844
Postby Degsy67 » November 5th, 2016, 4:47 pm
Lots of requests building up and quite a backlog. I didn't really want to add to the list but I thought I'd do a quick cross check of the boards I have on my TMF Favourite Board list and those setup already on Lemon Fool.
I've deliberately ignored those boards which are on my Favourite list but which I'd be quite happy to disappear as their value is limited. My view is that the migration to Lemon is a great opportunity for Darwinian evolution to kill off a few of the less valuable boards as opposed to trying to slavishly replicate all of the TMF boards.
In considering the list below I've also given some thought to the use of the sub-forum feature which I'm aware Stooz and Clari are playing with at the moment. There's an opportunity here to create an even better resource and community than the one we have left through considering improvements to the structure of some of the boards.
Brokers & Share Dealing - This board has already been established which is great. There are however some boards around which are specific to individual brokers, for example Alliance Trust Savings. I've noticed there's a lot of traffic on the brokers board which relates to questions about specific brokers. Other popular ones include iWeb, AJ Bell YouInvest, Interactive Investors etc. There's also a lot of threads which are simply asking for recommendations about which broker is best. Perhaps this is an opportunity to create a small number of sub-forums to help structure things better? Sub-forums for the current popular low cost brokers and a sub-forum specifically for 'Best broker for me' type questions which would include discussions on broker pricing.
Budget Discussion - This is a board which is quiet for 10 months of the year but bursts into life briefly around the time of the Autumn Statement and the full annual budget statement. The Autumn Statement is due on 23rd November which isn't too far away. Based on previous observation, budget related announcements also cause threads to be created on the Taxes - Practical board as well as the Pension related boards. My suggest here to help would be that Budget Discussion is created as a sub-forum under Taxes - Practical.
Taxes - Practical issues - A fantastically useful board and still receiving posts across on TMF. Based on my observations over the years, useful sub-forums here would be: Income Tax & NI, Capital Gains Tax, Inheritance Tax, Help with Self Assessment.
Collective Investments - Doesn't exist on TMF but here's my thinking... people have asked for an Investment Trusts & Funds board, TMF has as Exchange Traded Funds board which is useful but missing so far, there was also an Index Funds board which occasionally sprang to life. With a Collective Investments board you could potentially establish sub-forums for ETFs, ITs and Unit Trusts separately. Alternatively you could subdivide into Active Funds and Passive Funds.
Financial Tools - Already setup. Could be usefully subdivided down into Investment Tools (for HYP Tools, portfolio management software etc) and Budgeting Tools (for MS Money, Quicken etc).
Investment Strategies - Already setup. There's a board on TMF called Investing for Income and I think it has been requested already earlier in this this. As a suggestion, Investing for Income could be setup as a sub-forum under Investment Strategies. This could be have a complementary Investing for Capital Growth. That would leave the main forum to endlessly debate about the fact that it's Total Return which really counts or point posters to one, other or both of the sub-forums. This structure would also allow for future expansion for specific strategies (Value Investing, FTSE Dogs, Mechanical Investing etc) if there's a call for them going forwards (I'm not suggesting creating them now).
Pensions - Self Invested - SIPPs - The 'Pensions - Practical Problems' board has already been established. There's a TMF board called 'Pensions - Self-Invested - SIPPs' which attracted quite a bit of traffic. In my view there was always a lot of overlap between these two boards. My suggestion would be to setup a SIPPs sub-forum under the Pensions Practical board to keep the two of these together.
Peer to Peer Lending - to replace Social and P2P Lending on TMF.
Vanguard - There is a TMF board for Vanguard already and recently it received a bit of traffic as Vanguard has announced that it will be launching a direct investment platform in the UK. As and when it does I suspect that TMF boards would attract a lot of traffic around this. As a suggestion, why not add a sub-forum under Brokers & Share Dealing in anticipation (see above).
Hope the above is food for thought.
Great work so far. I'm amazed how quickly the TMF community has decamped and setup shop again over here.
Degsy
