Hello,

I've been meaning to ask these questions here but haven't had the time of day to post. So I collated a bunch of them into a text file and just pasted it here. Hope no one mind. A lot of the questions will be related to index funds. I was going through the flow chart and hit the node about long term investments. A lot of this will relate to Vanguard because that's the one I see getting mentioned in my search. I don't know anyone who does this sort of thing so I might be asking something that's is obvious (please bear with).

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1. Okay, this one isn't Vanguard related, it's a silly question but bear with me; what does financial advice look like? Specifically the paid services one, is it basically someone telling you where to put your money in?
2. My understanding it that index funds is like a stock in that I own a bit of a company (multiple companies) but the investment is spread through multiple companies. Is this correct?
3. Do I need to open an ISA first before "purchasing" a fund? I don't know what the process is or how it is done in UI.
4. Regarding fees, on Vanguard, there's an Account fee but there's also Ongoing costs and transaction costs. Are the latter 2 costs included in the account fee?
5. I see that there's an option to choose between accumulation and income (guessing that's dividends). Can I choose one and then change to the other at a later date? Just want to know if that's an option.
6. Do people treat this like a pension? I mean, do people throw some amount per month then forget about it? If so, did you pick the fund that's 100% stocks?
7. It's probably trackers, but why do I see Vanguard more often with regards to index funds? What is it specifically about this company and index fund?

Thank you for your time. I'll try to respond to any questions.