Becoming a single income family

rich_b

My wife is giving up work to be a full-time mum to two kids and I'm looking for tips on how we can best use her personal allowance to save tax. I'm a higher rate taxpayer with a reasonable income but it'll still be tight so we need to cut out whatever expenses we can.

Got a few specific questions too:
Am I right in assuming that there is no advantage to putting cash savings into a cash ISA if she never uses up her personal allowance and registers as a non-tax payer? (Unless the interest rate is really good of course...)

She has some shares from a work SAYE scheme which we were going to put into an S&S ISA to cut down on dividend tax before she decided to give up work. Is it still worth doing that?

I have a few SAYE shares too and I understand it'll be best to transfer them to her?

Living on one income with two kids is uncharted territory for us so any advice gratefully received!

xylophone

I think that it is a good idea to use at least the cash ISA allowance for the non-taxpaying partner because it is a "use it or lose it' allowance - it may be that in due course she will become a taxpayer and will regret not having built up her stash of tax free income.
With regard to the shares, this might be of interest. http://www.fool.co.uk/Your-Money/guides/Share-ISAs.aspx

As you are a higher rate tax payer, this article might be of interest re child benefit.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/experts/article-1705585/How-40-taxpayers-can-keep-child-benefit.html