Which ISA to cash in

SuperSoarAwaySnails

Hi

I'm after some general advice. My wife is due to start maturnity leave soon and in order to pay for our up keep during this time we are thinking of cashing in one of our ISA's.

I have some money in a Abbey Direct Saver type ISA with a good rate of interest as long as I communicate with them by post.

My wife has an investment type stocks and shares type ISA which isn't doing too well at the moment as the economy isn't either.

What would be peoples advice be. Should we wait for the stocks to recover and cash in the Abbey one that's doing well at the moment or should we cut our loses on the Stocks & shares based ISA?

isofa

Add into the mix switching the S+S ISA to a better fund or set of funds, then decide

How much is in each ISA? And how much are you looking to withdraw?

SuperSoarAwaySnails

isofa wrote: »

Add into the mix switching the S+S ISA to a better fund or set of funds, then decide

How much is in each ISA? And how much are you looking to withdraw?

we are looking to take about 3k out which would just about close the S&S one and or leave about 2k in my Abbey ISA

isofa

How much did you originally invest in the S&S ISA?

SuperSoarAwaySnails

Its one where you make payments on a monthly basis

JayZed

What you're essentially asking is the old unanswerable chestnut: which is better, a cash ISA or a S&S ISA? Your dilemma is no different from someone who's opening a new ISA. It depends on what you think the market will do (which of course nobody really knows), and on your own appetite for risk.

You need to decide what kind of balance you want between savings and investments. If you want to keep the balance at roughly 50/50, you might want to withdraw 2.5K from the cash one and £500 from the S&S one, leaving you with about 2.5K in each. If you have a higher risk appetite, you could leave the S&S one and withdraw 3K from the cash ISA; if not, you could withdraw it all from the S&S one. It's really a choice that you have to make for yourselves.

I'm assuming, of course, that you don't have any savings or investments outside ISA wrappers that you could use.

JayZed

Personally, all the ISAs I have at the moment are in S&S (I'm a fairly long way from retirement and don't plan to touch these investments for years), but I'm about to open a cash ISA for this year as we'll be moving house in 18 months or so and I'll probably need to get my hands on the cash then.