Cash ISA or Monthly Saver ?

cslogg

After trawling the the many posts here I find myself just going round in circles so I will state my position and hopefully someone with a greater knowledge then me of interest rates etc ( not difficult in my case) can advise.
I have around £3k sitting in my account waiting for me to invest.I have never had an ISA but going by the comments on here this looks like the way to go.However,I thought I could pay my £3k in one lump sum and leave it in for a year and that would be the end of it,but reading the posts here it seems I would have to pay a monthly amount.Can someone put me right about this?Also I can afford to put a sum of up to £500 per month away.On the advice of another friendly soul on here I have applied for a Monthly Savings account at 6% AER with Barclays but this will only take up half of my £500.I already bank with Barclays.
I would welcome any advice on what I am doing and especially what ISA and/or Saver to go for.As you can probably tell I am no financial expert so if you think I am going about this in completely the wrong way I do not mind being corrected.
I would prefer to do the applications etc. online if possible.
Thanks
cslogg

Aegis

Put the lump sum away into a decent cash ISA, fixing the rate if you can afford to live without the cash for a year or so. Then use the monthly saver to build up your cash ISA deposit for next year.

There, one way of doing both!

cslogg

OK.Assuming I go for a cash ISA ,and at the moment I am looking at the NATWEST CASH PLUS ISA at 3.51% (Unless you have a better recommendation),is it advisable to pay £300 per month or a lump sum of £3600.
cslogg

Aegis

cslogg wrote: »

OK.Assuming I go for a cash ISA ,and at the moment I am looking at the NATWEST CASH PLUS ISA at 3.51% (Unless you have a better recommendation),is it advisable to pay £300 per month or a lump sum of £3600.
cslogg

If you can pay in the lump sum, there's no obvious benefit to monthly investing into a simple cash ISA account. The tricky part comes when you look at something like the First Direct regular saver ISA at 7% and compare it to a standard ISA at 3.51%. Personally in that case I would still probably go with the normal ISA and a taxed regular saver for my following year's subscription (in fact, that's what I AM doing) if I had the lump sum available.