‘I’m 28 and a pretty terrible investor. I need your advice to turn £10,000 into £30,000’

Telegraph Money’s new Millennial Investor Imogen Tew, 28, has a baby on the way and hopes to buy a bigger house. After years of neglecting her portfolio, she needs help to become a better investor. Can you offer her any words of wisdom?

I’ve never been very good at New Year’s resolutions. Gym memberships languish unused, books wait anxiously unread on my bedside table and my alcohol intake slowly heads skyward following a failed attempt at Dry January.

This year, however, will be different – I will have you to hold me and my investment portfolio to account.

I began investing in July 2021. Following the typical advice, I dutifully opened my stocks and shares Isa portfolio and paid in a £10,000 lump sum I was left by a relative.

It’s been a tough few years in the stock market. Since mid-2021, the S&P 500 (an index incorporating 500 of the biggest companies in the US) is up about 9pc and the FTSE 100 (the UK’s equivalent) has returned 8pc.

Not great, considering the S&P 500 returned 28pc in 2019, 16pc in 2020 and 27pc in 2021. In fact, it’s pretty terrible when you take into account that you would need returns of about 18pc to keep up with staggeringly high inflation.

Safe to say, my timing was a little poor.

My portfolio, which is split between a handful of global tracker funds (low-cost funds which track an index) and far too many active funds (which are run by stockpickers and are typically focused on a specific type of investment), has performed even worse than these indices.

A fund investing in China has lost 48pc, my Japan fund has lost 20pc and two funds invested in UK smaller companies have lost 28 and 40pc respectively.

One and a half years later, my £10,000 portfolio is worth – drum roll, please – £10,000.

While I’ve not made any money, and technically lost spending power due to high inflation, the fact that I’m back where I began feels like a fresh start.

I’ve been unhappy with my fund choices for a while, but haven’t had the courage to sell at a loss; everyone tells you not to. This time last year, I even decided I would shake it up, told people I was going to start selling and went to make the changes, and then lost my nerve at the last second.

But New Year, fresh start: it’s time to MOT my portfolio, and give my investments a bit more care.

My aim is to turn my £10,000 into £30,000 over the next five years.

My husband and I bought our first property last year, but with a baby on the way (a little boy, due mid-April) and hopes of a larger family in the future, we will be looking to upsize quite significantly by 2029.

A lump sum of £30,000 to put towards moving costs and a deposit would be, to put it lightly, extremely helpful.

Part of this extra £20,000 will come from money that I put away each month, and I’ve started a £200 monthly direct debit into my Isa.

This will provide me with a £12,000 boost over five years, but should also help me smooth out returns through the magic of “pound cost averaging”. The idea is that by making regular payments into investments, you buy fewer units when prices are high and more when prices are low, effectively averaging out the price you pay.

The other £8,000 will need to come from investment growth, which will require a staggering 8pc to 9pc growth per year. High hopes from the novice investor who has made 0pc over the past 18 months.

But I’m hoping it’s not impossible. UK equities returned an average of 4.7pc a year in real terms (after inflation was taken into account) in the decade leading up to 2022, according to Barclays’s Equity Gilt Study, while investors in US equities saw growth of 12.5pc a year on average.

Now seems like a good time to start afresh. Economic indicators all point towards interest rates heading south soon, and recent inflation figures have come in lower than expected.

The real questions are: what should I keep, what should I sell and what should I buy?

I’ve spoken to experts that are convinced that now is one of the greatest entry points into the bond market in years, while others are firmly in the equities camp if you want real growth.

What should I do with my China and Japan funds? Are there any shares I should be thinking about investing in directly? Should I give up active management all together, and stick with my tracker funds? They are, after all, the only things to have made me money over the past 18 months.

If you’ve been managing your portfolio for years and have any top tips, or simply have a strong opinion about any of my existing investments, please send them my way – I’m all ears, and will keep you in the loop on the ups and downs of my quest.

Here we go.