Top Cash ISAs

Alexland

eskbanker said:

Not sure what's happening here - you can only pay £200 per month into a Help To Buy ISA so if you've paid £2,000 in, you must have done so over every month since March?  At least one of those would have been in the previous tax year, but the HTB ISA contribution limit is strictly monthly not annually.

While it's possible to make the excess transfer it should soon be rejected in part or full as exceeding the monthly HTB ISA allowance. Agree a LISA is more suited to lump sums.

parcival

Just opened a cash ISA account with the Vernon Building Society - 0.75% fixed for 15 months until March 2022. Done via post but seems efficient.

gwapenut

Just a reminder to anyone fortunate enough to have bagged the Barclays 3 year fixed rate 1.7% flexible ISA last March.... despite it being a fixed rate, you can put in your cash ISA allowance of £20k each tax year, which looks stunning value compared with other savings rates currently. (You can't transfer any maturing funds in now though).

And if you're worried it stretches your cashflow a little .... remember that the T&Cs say you can make up to 3 withdrawals over the entire term, each being for 10% of the balance, and each being a flexible withdrawal that can be paid back in before the end of the tax year.

A fantastic product!

orcadian

There's a big gap in Martin Lewis's MSE search engine if you want cash ISAs for 16 year olds:

Martin Lewis says if your child maxed out their Children's ISA £9k allowance and is age 16 or 17, they can ALSO open a Cash ISA using the Adult cash ISA allowance (£20k per annum) in the same year - this loophole only applies to 16 & 17-year olds. BUT MSE search engine for Top Cash ISAs doesn't have any way to select out ISAs that are open to 16 years+. And MSE search keeps throwing up top Cash ISAs only open to 18+ adults. Virgin are clever enough to know this and offer their Easy Access Cash E-ISA to anyone over 16 but in March 2021 the interest  rate is 0.25% - half what you'd get from MSE easy-access Cash ISA (Virgin DO offer 0.5% interest rate for current account holders - but you need to be over 18 to open the Virgin current account, so that's not the interest rate for 16-year olds).Martin Lewis - can you fix your ISA search engine to select for these cash ISAs for 16 year olds please? And I'm NOT talking children's ISAs.

eskbanker

orcadian said:

There's a big gap in Martin Lewis's MSE search engine if you want cash ISAs for 16 year olds:

[...]

Martin Lewis - can you fix your ISA search engine to select for these cash ISAs for 16 year olds please? And I'm NOT talking children's ISAs.

Apart from the fact that neither Martin Lewis nor anyone else responsible for editorial site content is likely to see posts on here, a quick look around various other comparison sites encounters the same issue everywhere, i.e. I didn't come across any that allowed filtering by minimum opening age, so it's hardly a big gap that needs to be fixed.

Having said that, https://www.money.co.uk/savings-accounts/cash-isas.htm has account info visible when hovering via a desktop browser, showing that Yorkshire's six-access product is available to 16 year olds: https://www.ybs.co.uk/savings/product.html?id=YB851311W

If branch/post access is sufficient, https://www.ibs.co.uk/savings-products/stepping-stone-isa may be worth a look....

Kinkajou

If you're interested in the Nationwide BS new Cash ISA offering 0.75%, please note that you are only able to fund it via one source. For example, just one isa transfer from external or from Nationwide account, or just one deposit of new isa funding. Hope this saves you some time when you try to open the account on the Nationwide website as it is not explained there.

epm-84

Kinkajou said:

If you're interested in the Nationwide BS new Cash ISA offering 0.75%, please note that you are only able to fund it via one source. For example, just one isa transfer from external or from Nationwide account, or just one deposit of new isa funding. Hope this saves you some time when you try to open the account on the Nationwide website as it is not explained there.

For existing customers only and it's a 18 month fixed term.  Although, note if you transfer £10,000 or more in then you could qualify for £50 cashback, making the interest rate effectively 1.08% on a £10,000 balance.

XYZetc

Sainsburys Bank Cash ISA rate drop, fastest ever seen!

Yesterday MSE top instant access cash ISA was Sainsburys Bank 0.95%. Great, signed up, moved a £1 in to get started. Checked today to confirm £1 had gone in and noticed rate now 0.75%!

Waiting on phone for nearly an hour, gave up, so messaged them to close my ISA. Within their 14 day cooling off period so I will be now be able to open another ISA with another provider, as per their Help pages.

Will not trust Sainsburys Bank again, that's for sure.

XYZetc

Ooops! Please ignore my post above, (Sainsburys ISA rate was lower because interest rates are tiered! Tail between legs!🙄
(No option to remove or edit my post, sorry!)

silvermum

Is anyone aware of a calculator which quickly helps you decide if it's worth ditching/transferring fixed rate ISAs early, and taking  the early penalty hit, in favour of newer ISAs with much higher rates?

I have a sum of £40k in a fixed ISA from last year with still 6 months to run paying only 0.75%. Intuitively, I feel it will probably make sense to move it to a new 1.52% one?

(I know I can work it out myself, but I felt sure there must a be useful calculator somewhere!?)