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I’m constructing a portfolio of formidable FTSE 100 shares in my Shares and Shares ISA. Right here’s one I believe may assist me finally retire in consolation.
Investing in FTSE 100 shares has confirmed a profitable funding technique for an ideal many buyers. Since its inception within the mid-Nineteen Eighties, the UK’s main share index has delivered a mean annual return of seven.5%.
This is much better than the return money accounts have supplied over that interval. And it reveals that buyers don’t have to put money into high-risk securities like cryptocurrencies to construct wealth both. It’s why I’ve invested closely in UK blue-chip corporations.
Nonetheless, I’m not limiting my procuring checklist to Footsie shares. My portfolio can be full of FTSE 250 shares that might present a tasty mix of capital positive factors and passive earnings.
It’s a plan that might take my wealth to the following stage if historical past repeats itself. The FTSE 250 has delivered a good higher common yearly return of 11% because the early Nineties.
A BIG passive earnings
After all previous efficiency isn’t any assure of future returns. However let me present you the type of cash I may make if these two UK share indices retain their spectacular data.
We’ll say that I intention to speculate equally throughout FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 shares. We’ll additionally assume I’ve £500 to speculate every month, I reinvest any dividends I obtain, and I don’t contact my hard-earned positive factors for 30 years.
Primarily based on this standards, I may make a life-changing £964,467. And if I then resolve to take 4% of this quantity a yr as passive earnings, I’d have a juicy £38,579 to retire on.

A high FTSE 100 inventory
A technique I may hit these figures can be by shopping for one or two tracker funds. The iShares 350 UK Fairness Index Fund as an illustration tracks the efficiency of each FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 shares.
Alternatively, I may attempt to obtain market-beating returns by shopping for particular person shares. It is a path I’ve most well-liked to go down. And I’ve loaded my Shares and Shares ISA with steady progress and dividend shares together with riskier shares to hit this objective.
BAE Techniques (LSE:BA.) is one ultra-robust Footsie agency I’d purchase at the moment. Its shares have rocketed since 2022 following the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine. I’m tipping them to proceed rising too, as nations embark on a protracted rearmament course of.
International locations throughout North America and Europe are climbing arms spending in response to the rising budgets of China and Russia. It’s a cycle that’s more likely to drag on — Beijing introduced plans to lift defence expenditure by 7.2% this yr — and within the course of drive enterprise at main Western defence contractors like BAE Techniques.
Orders right here jumped to a report of £37.7bn in 2023 towards this supportive backdrop. And this in flip pushed its order backlog to an all-time excessive of £69.8bn.
Though challenge execution issues are a relentless threat that might dent earnings, I nonetheless assume the potential advantages of proudly owning BAE Techniques shares outweigh these risks. It’s why I’ll be wanting so as to add the corporate to my ISA once I subsequent have money to speculate.