What Can A 17yr Old Do? Please Help!

YoungBuck_3

Hi there,

I'm 17 and have decided i want to do something with some of my money from work. most of it is just in my Barclays Young Persons account and the rest is in Premium Bonds (still havn't won anything!) I am ineterested in investing it, or had anyone got any other ideas? If not can anyone give me a little bit of help re investing?

Many Thanks

Steve

astheniaxgirl

Heya. I'm in a similar situation to be honest. All I could really advise doing is to get your money and put it into a High Interest savings account. Barclaycard is advertising some really good rates at the moment and if you put in £25 a minimum its something like a 10% interest rate. If you want to talk sometime then drop me a line!

Karnam

make sure you make the most of your tax free allowance and invest into an ISA.

pavlovs_dog

if you havent already done so, make sure you read martin's articles on savings (see the savings tab on the navigation bar down the left hand side of the page) to make sure you fully understand how the system works, and how to get the most from your money

muddyfox470

As a student myself i was in a similar situation. To be honest though the saving accounts don't matter to us so much, as normally you can have all your acounts exempt from tax.

However it is worth starting to save in an ISA to build up your tax free nest, too keep the money from the government :P

That could be just opening an ISA on the highsteet, or i recommend the Guaranteed ISA from National Counties BS. You can open the account with £1 and then you can transfer any amount you want from then on up to your £3000 limit. If you ever need access to the money just give them a call and the money will be wired back to your main account. So long as you have access to internet banking this is a great option as it is easy to control, and they are paying 5.1% for the year with a 0.4% above base rate guarantee for the year, so you are likely to keep a decent rate for the coming year.

As for the 10% barclays regular savings offer. IIRC you need to have £1000 in your current account at barclays to be eligible for the offer. And to be honest they don't bring great rewards. As the 10% will only apply to the first payment (as that is the only one in there for the 12 months, so all in (not knowing the funny maths some people do on here) it would be equivalent to putting the money as a lump sum at about 6ish% - if that (at a pure guess))

With the NCBS ISA you are not tied to anything and you have access to your money whenever you want, and you are not commited to make monthly payments each month. https://www.ncbs.co.uk if that does sound like what your after, however it is a limited offer, so it may disappear soon.

The above is basically what i have done for the past few years and now im in my first year at uni. (with money all over the place) lol

Hope that helps

Ian

EDIT: If your happy with your money in premium bonds leave them there, you never know! I have a small holding just in case

EDIT2: The easiest option as astheniaxgirl said is probably to open a good paying highstreet isa / savings account (as you get it tax free) and just deposit when you can. Just make sure there isn't a minimum balance or anything like that.

megsykins

Remember, if you're not earning enough pa to pay tax (which you probably aren't) there's a form you can fill in so you don't pay tax on interest in any account, not just an ISA.

For me, this means that I actually get higher interest on my e-savings account than my ISA.

It is worth using up your annual ISA allowance though, as it stays tax-free.

ruhere2

Many people have left really good sound advice about ISA. I would also agree with megsykins about your annual ISA allownce. You would be safe tax wise.