best long term savings options for children

GingerFurball_2

From my understanding, your kids won't be eligible for Junior ISAs. Only kids who were born before CTFs started or after the government stopped them will be eligible for them.

Timingthemarket

You should be in the stock market but definitely not now since risk down is HIGH. Follow the tides of the market.
It´s very safe since you know if your analysis is wrong and can get out without losing much.
I adviced my clients to buy at the end of 2008 and early 2009 around the lows. Now i advice them to sell.

atush

You can probably pay your son's check into your own acct if he doesn't have one and they pay out of there for investments.

If you are truly worried about shares, then out half each into a NSI ilsc, then put the other half to drip feed into an investment trust savings acct. once the 2.5K is used up (say 25 months at 100/mo) you can cointinue to invest in the inv trst with your own cash or with their child benefit. You can lower or raise monthly contributions pretty much any time.

This way you will protect some fo their fund, and the rest will gorw better in the long term. AS an example, one of my monthly inv trust savings plans is with Invesco perpetual income and growth. It is up 24.3% int he last year, and 42.8% in the lat tow years. Far more growth than you will ever see from a cash savings acct.

There are periods of poor preformance when their is a major market corrections such as we saw with the credit crunch. So during those periods, the return was -4.2% and -13% over 24-36 and 36-48 months. But druing those periods when markets were falling, the price falls too. So each month when my little tiny subscription goes in, it bought far more shares/units of investment. So the value of my holdings shot up the past few years. This is called 'pound cost averaging' and it plus compound interest and reinvestment of dividends will give your children a great start when they will need the money to fund university, or to start an independant life in work.

So read up and look into it. you will be (like I am now) very happy with returns over 15 years if you do go this way.

If you did decide to go the inv trust savings route, then I would suggest you open a seperate current account with your bank (or a savings acct with your bank if they allow direct debits from it) and put the money in there. Then drip feed in 500/month per child for 10 months, or 250/m for 20 months into the trust of your choice. Drip feeding in this way will help you avoid having to 'time' the market as the pound cost averaging previously mentionned will help counter market volatility in prices.

kidmugsy

Put each cheque into an ns&i Index-Linked Savings Certificates held in trust, as suggested above. On each anniversary of buying the Cerificate, consider whether you'd like to withdraw any of the funds to put into a Child ISA or Investment Trust Savings Scheme.

spdavies

dawyldthing wrote: »

how about a 3 or 5 year saver? Then you can do the same again when they mature 3 times over. I believe theres 5% for a 3 year saver which would make 250 pounds a year so if you get similar until they are 18 you'll roughly get it to 9000 then some more on the compound roughly so could set them up for a bit of money when older

5% for a 3yr saver - who does that then?