In her first blog post, What Investment publisher Sara Williams takes stock of her ISA and SIPP portfolio.

There’s something cathartic about the start of a new year, don’t you think? Throw the horrors of the past 12 months over your shoulder and stride forward with renewed hope and optimism.

Reality will hit, no doubt, as the year progresses but there’s a few weeks’ grace while you strive to achieve the plans and hopes that you set out.

Like most of you, I’m sure, over the New Year period my family has worked out its financial priorities for the coming year. One son has stepped up the amount of his savings, but wants to keep most of it accessible, as he is planning to buy his first flat with his girlfriend. He has also increased saving in a SIPP and decided that he’s going to try and keep his saving level at around 10 per cent of his income. Hope he keeps that up!

The other son is carrying on saving pretty much as he’s been doing so for the last year (around 10 per cent towards repaying a loan and saving in a company pension scheme) until he’s able to buy a property. As for the elder members of the Williams family, we’ve been carrying out a restructuring of the whole of our portfolio for the last six or seven months. We had a root-and-branch review of where we are over the New Year period.

We’re both reaching an age which has traditionally been regarded as the normal retirement age, although we’re choosing to carry on working for some time yet. Apparently, there’s a new acronym for people like us: ‘wearies’, which stands for ‘working, entrepreneurial and active retirees’.

So our portfolio, split approximately 25/75 between ISAs and SIPPs, has taken on a much more defensive look than 12 months ago, a process we began last summer. Fortuitous timing for us, as the decisions we made, including raising our holdings in companies like Glaxo, BATS, Unilever and Diageo, have helped us easily outperform the FTSE 100 over the last six months. Stocks like this give you a decent income stream, which is exactly why we’ve moved in that direction, focussing on putting these investments into our ISAs. There is, of course, a strong argument that this is the most effective long-term investment policy, one that Neil Woodford has adhered to in his hugely successful fund, Invesco Perpetual Income.

There is no doubt that if the stock market romps away in the future, these stocks could become underperformers, but the existence of a steady and growing dividend stream, continually reinvested, means holding these companies is still a good long-term strategy for both SIPPs and ISAs.

To give you some idea of the shape of our investments, this is the split. We have 39 per cent in FTSE 100 companies, 11 per cent in mid- and small-caps (weighted at the smaller end), 12 per cent in preference shares, 5 per cent in cash and the remaining 33 per cent in a mixture of unit and investment trusts, focussing on global themes, including emerging markets and corporate bonds.

I guess some advisers might think this is slightly riskier than it should be for our age, but we’re comfortable with that. In September we held around 30 per cent in cash, but the move towards defensive larger stocks offers us some protection on the downside and in the meantime gives us a yield on the portfolio as a whole of around 4 to 5 per cent.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be regularly updating you about our portfolio and investment strategy, including my view on the overall market, portfolio splits, mid-caps, small-caps, emerging markets, preference shares, corporate bonds and cash. Let me know your thoughts on what I’m doing and your own investment issues. Opinions welcome.