Use January to jump-start better habits

• January was the biggest month for new regular investors in 2024 – which has consistently been the case for the past five years.
• The number of HL regular savers has risen by a third in the past five years.
• Last January saw the biggest ‘January Jump’ in people starting regular savings into investments through HL since the lockdown boom of 2021.

Sarah Coles, head of personal finance, Hargreaves Lansdown:

“If this year’s new leaf is already looking as tired as the Christmas tree turning brown in the corner of the living room, it’s worth considering the kind of changes that make it easy to do the right thing every month without trying. For the past five years, we’ve seen a wave of investors set up regular investments at the start of the year, jump-starting better habits that will last all year – even if your New Year enthusiasm for change barely makes it to the weekend.

January 2023 saw a particularly impressive jump – with more new regular savers than any time since the lockdown boom of 2021. It’s likely to owe something to the fact that wage rises, on average, were outstripping inflation, so more people had money available to put aside for the future. The HL Savings & Resilience Barometer shows that higher earners in particular have seen a real rise in the money they have left at the end of the month, giving them the opportunity to do something constructive with it, so the January Jump could help even more people reach their goals in 2025.

Regular monthly savings are a great way to get into investments. You don’t need a large lump sum to get started, you don’t need to remember your good intentions every month, and they’re also a useful approach during times of volatility. By drip-feeding your money into stock market ISAs, you will take advantage of their downs as well as their ups, through what’s known as pound cost averaging. If you invest a fixed sum every month, you can buy more units when a fund’s value falls, providing the potential for greater profits when they have risen in value.”

The most popular funds and shares in regular investments in 2024

Source: HL