Help to Buy ISA guide

sian8585

Hi there

This article is great and really looking into doing this.
Could you tell me if £200 pcm is the minimum required to pay into the ISA each month? or am i able to put in less?

Thanks

Sian

Ed-1

sian8585 wrote: »

Hi there

This article is great and really looking into doing this.
Could you tell me if £200 pcm is the minimum required to pay into the ISA each month? or am i able to put in less?

Thanks

Sian

It's the maximum.

badger09

greenglide wrote: »

You could do this providing you only transferred existing ISAs and added no new money.

The Virgin ISA that I have just looked at accepts transfers but also requires at least £1 of "new" money so you cannot do this.

Would you not be better of with interest paying current accounts?

greenglide wrote: »

According to the Virgin Money site the Defined Access ISA and the Easy Access Cash ISA have a "Minimum to Open" of £1 but it doesnt actually say (at least where I can find it) whether an ISA transfer can be used to meet that condition or whether "new" money is required.

Precisely.

Nowhere do Virgin's T&C state that the minimum deposit of £1 must be new money, despite your earlier post:cool:.

djsat2

Apologies if this has already been asked...

I got a Nationwide HTB ISA last year and have been paying in £200 every month, i recently came into around £6000 and obviously can't put this into the HTB ISA as a lump sum However .... if i transferred my HTB ISA to another bank could i take advantage of their first month £1200 pay-in allowance? As someone who wants to buy soon i want to get as much into this account as possible to take advantage of the gvt bonus.

eskbanker

djsat2 wrote: »

I got a Nationwide HTB ISA last year and have been paying in £200 every month, i recently came into around £6000 and obviously can't put this into the HTB ISA as a lump sum However .... if i transferred my HTB ISA to another bank could i take advantage of their first month £1200 pay-in allowance?

No, as per https://www.helptobuy.gov.uk/help-to-buy-isa/faq/

If I transfer my Help to Buy: ISA to another bank, building society or credit union, can I put in the maximum initial deposit of £1,200 again?
No. You can transfer your Help to Buy: ISA to a different bank, building society or credit union, but your allowances will stay the same. So, even if you did not save the full £1,200 when you first opened your Help to Buy: ISA, you will not be able to save more than your monthly allowance of up to £200.

badger09

djsat2 wrote: »

Apologies if this has already been asked...

I got a Nationwide HTB ISA last year and have been paying in £200 every month, i recently came into around £6000 and obviously can't put this into the HTB ISA as a lump sum However .... if i transferred my HTB ISA to another bank could i take advantage of their first month £1200 pay-in allowance? As someone who wants to buy soon i want to get as much into this account as possible to take advantage of the gvt bonus.

eskbaker has explained why you can't do this. Have a read here for where to put your £6k

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/which-saving-account

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/savings-accounts-best-interest

Miro_Ralston

Hi there,

Firstly thanks for the content on the HTB ISA article - very helpful.

I'm about to start my first job and would like to start saving simultaneously. I have some savings (two accounts of roughly £6,000 each) already which are accruing very little having run their course in the accounts they were put in.

I will start earning my salary at the end of March, and can therefore make regular contributions from then. Am I best to avoid everything else, and put as much of my savings as possible into a LISA come April, whilst opening as high-rate as possible current account for the rest? Or would I be better looking at Split ISAs?

Any advice is very helpful.

Many thanks

Kingosticks

I'm really confused about these split ISAs. I've tried at two separate Nationwide branches to open one and none of the staff knew what I was talking about, I even showed them this article. The cashier in the 2nd branch told me you can spread your yearly allowance over as many ISAs as you like.

So I asked them via twitter about this and got this clarification:

You certainly can do providing they are all with the same institution

.

So, is a split HTB/cash Isa necessary, does it still exist? Is this article just out of date (like the rates are)? I also found that the increased interest rate for being a Flex account holder is only for a "Flexclusive ISA" and not the normal one. And the rate is (now) lower. Maybe I'm missing something.

bowlhead99

Kingosticks wrote: »

So, is a split HTB/cash Isa necessary, does it still exist? Is this article just out of date (like the rates are)?

To expand on their Twitter message, you can split your ISA allowance over multiple cash ISA products providing they are all with the same institution *and* that institution has the systems and procedures in place to treat them as one big ISA for HMRC reporting purposes.

So yes, you "certainly can do" if all this year's subscriptions are all with one institution and that institution is Nationwide, because they are able and happy to do that. The second branch person you spoke to was correct that you can have as many cash ISAs as you like *with them* but he/she was not speaking for the whole industry.

You definitely can't have current year cash isa contributions with two different providers, and you can't have current year cash ISA money in multiple ISA accounts with one provider if that provider isn't willing to split your allowance into multiple accounts and aggregate them together again for the purposes of telling HMRC how much you contributed this year. If you're using Nationwide, and certain other providers who support splitting the allowance, you are fine.

I also found that the increased interest rate for being a Flex account holder is only for a "Flexclusive ISA" and not the normal one. And the rate is (now) lower. Maybe I'm missing something.

If you are a Flex customer meeting the terms and conditions to get access to the better products, you can open up one of those better products.

If you choose to open up one of the normal products that anyone can get, you won't just start getting more interest in it; it's a different product and everyone using that product gets the same terms.

4tex

Hi all,

I opened a Help to Buy ISA in 2015/16 with the maximum allowance and have been saving the maximum £200 each month.

I haven't opened a new Cash ISA or added anything to any existing Cash ISAs (I don't have any!) in 2016/17, and I was wondering whether it's possible to use my 2016/17 allowance of £15,240 to add to/bolster my Help to Buy ISA at all. Or is that not allowed??

My Help to Buy ISA says it allows transfers in - does this just mean for the initial opening deposit - or can I open a Cash ISA and then transfer some of this into my Help to Buy ISA (which has the best return)?

Does anybody have any experience of this? Any advice would be welcomed!

Thanks.

Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere, however I didn't find anything relevant through a tentative search of the forum.