If I'd opened an ISA account in April 1999..

Numberlock

.....and faithfully invested the maximum under the ISA rules each year and never withdrew any amount, how much would I have in that same account now 13 years later?

I kinda let the whole ISA thing pass me by because I'm able to earn income on my savings without being taxed but now I'm wondering if I've made a bit of a boo-boo.....

Anyone who is financially savvy please enlighten me? Thanks.

Stompa

Well I guess there are a lot of variables, but according to:

http://www.investortoday.co.uk/news_features/taxpayers-throwing-away-thousands

Savers who have used their full cash ISA allowance every year since their introduction in 1999 would be £3800 richer than if they had just put the same amount away in an easy access savings account, according to analysis by MoneySupermarket.com.

bonzer

It's tricky to know how they've calculated it and whether they have included e.g. bonus rate accounts that you may have taken advantage of. In quite a lot of the period, the best easy access rate has been higher than the best ISA rate because the banks often haven't passed on the full tax saving. Have they also factored in the 30 day delay (now 15 working days) for transferring from one ISA to another that was in place for most of that time. You would have needed to switch ISAs almost every year to keep your interest rate up and would have likely lost interest during the process.

I wouldn't spend time worrying about it. You can't wind back time and have to move forwards from where you are. I should have bought a house in 1999, but there you go.

badger09

Numberlock wrote: »

.....and faithfully invested the maximum under the ISA rules each year and never withdrew any amount, how much would I have in that same account now 13 years later?

I kinda let the whole ISA thing pass me by because I'm able to earn income on my savings without being taxed but now I'm wondering if I've made a bit of a boo-boo.....

Anyone who is financially savvy please enlighten me? Thanks.

I have over £69k in cash ISAs at the moment :j.

Before ISAs were launched, there were TESSAs & TOISAs (Tax Exempt Special Savings Accounts followed by TESSA Only ISAs).

I can't remember if I always managed to save the maximum amount each year, and I wasn't as financially savvy then as I am now - nor did I have as much time to research the best rates etc But I did work for HMRC and definitely didn't want to pay a penny more tax than I had to :rotfl:

brewerdave

My wife and I have ~ £110k in Cash ISA accounts....and we definitely haven't maxed out our contributions,and have actually withdrawn some to help pay off our mortgage - without going thru the machinations I would suspect that we could have had ~ £80k each by now??

evenasus

brewerdave wrote: »

My wife and I have ~ £110k in Cash ISA accounts....and we definitely haven't maxed out our contributions,and have actually withdrawn some to help pay off our mortgage - without going thru the machinations I would suspect that we could have had ~ £80k each by now??

That's right.

I've just had a quick look at my Quicken and my husband and myself both have this amount in our ISAs.

If you remember, in the beginning, when they started life as a TESSA there was a limit of £9000.00 only being able to be held in an TESSA.

The first year you could put in £3000.00
Second year £1800.00
Third year £1800.00
Fourth year £1800.00
Fifth year £600.00

thenudeone

Numberlock wrote: »

I'm able to earn income on my savings without being taxed but now I'm wondering if I've made a bit of a boo-boo.....

That situation might change in the future (perhaps if you start drawing a pension?) so you might as well use the allowance to get it tax free for life. It would be a brave politician who removed the tax-free status on existing ISAs

Also, because of the annual deadline, banks get very competitive and tend to offer better rates on ISAs than on non-ISA accounts.

dasherman

evenasus wrote: »

That's right.

I've just had a quick look at my Quicken and my husband and myself both have this amount in our ISAs.

If you remember, in the beginning, there was a limit of £9000.00 only being able to be held in an ISA.

The first year you could put in £3000.00
Second year £1800.00
Third year £1800.00
Fourth year £1800.00
Fifth year £600.00

The OP wants to know about ISA's, these figures relate to TESSA's which were replaced by ISA's in 1999.

The maximum year by year amounts payable into ISA's were(assuming cash isa is maxed out first) as follows:
1999-2008 - £3,000(cash) + £4,000(shares) = £7,000
2008-2010 - £3,600 + £3,600 = £7,200
2010-2011 - £5,100 + £5,100 = £10,200
2011-2012 - £5,340 + £5,340 = £10,680

That makes maximum contributions into ISA's since their launch in April 1999 of £44,640 into cash and £98,280 in total. How much they're actually worth will obviously depend on interest rates and/or investment growth.

evenasus

dasherman wrote: »

The OP wants to know about ISA's, these figures relate to TESSA's which were replaced by ISA's in 1999.

I've corrected my error - I did mean to type TESSA.

I was just showing how the tax free savings started.