help with isa's

mkgirl1981

hi
yesterday i opened an isa with barclays, so im assuming this is for tax year 2009 - 2010. will this account just keep accumulating interest in 2010/11 if i dont touch it ?

also im due to inheiret a bit of money this year, can i open another isa with barclays with this money after the new tax year starts or will i have to do it with a different bank ?

there seems to be loads of rules about how many isas you can have and its all a bit confusing.

grateful for any help you can give me

Masomnia

mkgirl1981 wrote: »

hi
yesterday i opened an isa with barclays, so im assuming this is for tax year 2009 - 2010. will this account just keep accumulating interest in 2010/11 if i dont touch it ?

Indeed it will.

also im due to inheiret a bit of money this year, can i open another isa with barclays with this money after the new tax year starts or will i have to do it with a different bank ?

You shouldn't need to open a new account, you can just pay into the Barclay's one you've just opened. I'm assuming it's the new Golden ISA issue? In that case you can just keep paying into it as an when, you can pay up to £5,100 into it next tax year. You'll only get that rate for another year as the bonus is fixed for 12 months after you've opened the account, so be looking to transfer it in a years time.

there seems to be loads of rules about how many isas you can have and its all a bit confusing.

grateful for any help you can give me

Mmm it's probably deliberate.

As long as you only pay new funds into one ISA per year you'll be ok.

mkgirl1981

thanks, but i can only pay in upto £3,600. the one i opened yesterday i paid £2000 into so if i could have two both with £3600 in would that be possible ?

Masomnia

mkgirl1981 wrote: »

thanks, but i can only pay in upto £3,600. the one i opened yesterday i paid £2000 into so if i could have two both with £3600 in would that be possible ?

You can pay up to £3,600 this tax year, but from 6th April you can put a further £5,100 in. The ISA limit is per tax year not per account, and the limit will be going up to £5,100 from £3,600 which is why you can put more in.

You can't pay into a new ISA until after 6th April, but you can put another £1,600 in the one you have before then.

As I say you can carry on paying into the one you've just opened next tax year. There's no need to open a new one as you should carry on getting that rate for 12 months.

mkgirl1981

thanks fror the advice guess i'll have to wait & see

Sanzai

I recommend you keep an eye on the interest rate via the Barclays website too, because for the Golden ISA only the bonus portion of the interest rate is fixed until next year - the rest of the rate is variable and Barclays could potentially reduce it at any point.

lonsam

Hi guys

There seems to be a lot of rules around opening isas and i think, i think I have a hold on it although I need some help still and advice.

My dilemma

Recently I acquired a substantial amount of money, well to me anyway, anyhow I opened a Flexi isa 3.2 with Santander, which I put the full isa allowance in, £5100, but I still have about quite a couple of thousand to play with, now my question is I have another isa account with Santander, which I haven't touched since the end of the last tax year and was told if I went ahead and opened this Flex isa 3.2 for this tax year I must leave the old isa along, can someone confirm if this is true or could I add to my odd isa?

Please help and I am literally stumped at what to do with the rest of this money as obvious I want to place it somewhere where it will work harder for me, any suggestions gratefully appreciated?

Lokolo_2

lonsam wrote: »

Recently I acquired a substantial amount of money, well to me anyway, anyhow I opened a Flexi isa 3.2 with Santander, which I put the full isa allowance in, £5100, but I still have about quite a couple of thousand to play with, now my question is I have another isa account with Santander, which I haven't touched since the end of the last tax year and was told if I went ahead and opened this Flex isa 3.2 for this tax year I must leave the old isa along, can someone confirm if this is true or could I add to my odd isa?

Please help and I am literally stumped at what to do with the rest of this money as obvious I want to place it somewhere where it will work harder for me, any suggestions gratefully appreciated?

Unfortunately since you have already paid the maximum £5100 into an ISA, you may not contribute any more until the next tax year.

There is also a rule stating you can only contribute "new" money to ONE ISA per tax year, so it would not be possible to contribute new money to both ISA as you have suggested.

What you can do however is transfer the old ISA to another provider, not to Santander as I don't think they allow transfers in.

Either way if you have some spare cash now it's worth considering at least putting it into the best paying instant access savings account so you at least earn some interest for it, then you could add it to one of your existing ISA's next year or of course to a new ISA. :j

lonsam

Hi aaronmanz

I'm confused, what difference would it make if I transfer the old ISA to another provider, rather then leave it with Santander?

Does anyone know of any best paying bank accounts, one that allow you to draw out occasionally, not that I would be drawing on it much?

Lokolo_2

lonsam wrote: »

I'm confused, what difference would it make if I transfer the old ISA to another provider, rather then leave it with Santander?

Not much difference at the moment as the Santander 3.2% was possibly the best instant access ISA around, but after the 1yr fixed period when the bonus drops you should transfer to another provider.

As for instant access accounts, try one of the price comparisson websites to find the highest paying one that suits you :j