Seriously confused

a_username_2

1st,please don't jump on me,i'm so confused i had to register and ask.:o

The ISA limit per year is £5,640 right?
Some of you are mentioning a hell of a lot more in your ISA's,how come?

I have just online gone for the 2yr fixed rate one with Santander,i have £15000 from a redundancy payment that i want to put away and forget.

So how much can i put into the Santander ISA,and any suggestions for what's left over?

Seriously sorry for what would be for some of you a stooopid question.

MoneySaverLog

£5,640 this tax year into a cash ISA. However Cash ISA's have been going for sometime and each new tax year you get a new allowance so can add to it each year. However you cannot go retrospectively, miss the deadline and that years ISA allowance has gone forever.

You should review your ISAs at least every 12 months and not just forget about them as rates drop after a certain amount of time. You should look to transfer using a new providers transfer form. Any money paid into a ISA should not just be withdrawn by yourself unless you need the money as once you take it out you cannot replace that part of your ISA allowance.

Your actual full ISA allowance for 2012-13 tax year is £11,280 but you can only put a max of £5,640 into the cash ISA element. The rest would have to go into a Stocks and Shares ISA. I don't touch these personally as the value of these can go down as well as up and you could end up with less than you put into it.

thenudeone

Cash ISAs and their predecessors TESSAs (Tax Exempt Special Savings Acccount) have been around for at least a couple of decades now.

You get a new allowance every year. Everything you put in during previous years remains tax-free as long as you leave it there.

If you'd used every year's allowance and left all the interest untouched, then you could have around £70-£80k (or more?) by now.