Telegraph Money’s Millennial Investor, Imogen Tew, 28, has a baby on the way and hopes to turn £10k into £30k in five years to buy a bigger house

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

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 of 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 (lowcost funds which track an index) and far too many active funds (which are run by stockpickers and typically focused on specific investment types), has performed even worse than these indices. One fund investing in China has lost 48pc, my Japan fund has lost 20pc, while two funds that specialise in smaller UK companies have lost 28pc 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