Help to Buy ISA - Meh

JamesFews

Hi all,

I have been looking into this help to buy ISA and to be honest, I think its a waste of time. I was really into the idea and then I noticed that you can only save a max of £200 a month. So basically it forces you into 5 years of savings to earn the max of 3k bonus from the government.
1. What if you want to save more because you can and don't want to take 5 years to buy a house?
2. 3k is going to be worth nothing in 5 years.

So suffice it to say I wont be bothering with that as I plan to have a deposit in 2 years. So my next question is, how do i maximize my savings. I am extremely crap when it comes to understanding investments and things like that and I don't do well with numeracy. Bottom line is my mother has just paid off her mortgage and has kindly offered to allow me to stay there rent free so I can save up the money for the deposit. I'm looking at being able to save 1k a month.

So can anyone advise on what I can do with this money to maximize it?

Thanks
James

19lottie82

Of course you can save more than £200 a month! You just won't get more than the £50 a month top up on that than the government is offering.

POPPYOSCAR

I do not think you understand how an ISA works.


Read thishttp://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/help-to-buy-ISA

matttye

You will not find another savings account which pays 25% on £200 per month. It is by far the best option for saving a house deposit.

You can still save whatever you like above and beyond the £200 per month by putting it into other accounts. E.g. I have a Help to Buy ISA, a TSB Plus, a TSB Regular Saver and a Santander 123, all of which I divide my money into each month.

matttye

P.S. Nobody is forcing you to save for 5 years.

If you save for 2 years you will have £200*24 = £4,800 + the bonus of £1,200 = £6,000 or thereabouts. On top of that you will have 4% interest (however as it is a dripfed account you will only get 4% on the whole amount for one month - prior to that it will be in £200 increments).

By contrast the next best paid regular saving account is FirstDirect, which pays 6%; not 29%!

kitrat

You can still save in another ISA at the same time (just need to look at the details to see what's acceptable).

I already had a Natwest ISA that I was able to keep and run alongside a Help to Buy ISA that I got with them. So I save £200 per month into the HTB ISA and anything on top of that goes into my original ISA.

The interest rate is as good as you could realistically hope for (think it's Halifax that is doing 4%), it's far greater than the interest rate of my bog standard Natwest ISA.

I'm also only expecting to be saving for 1-2 more years but I'm essentially being given an extra £50 a month for doing what I'm doing anyway, not to be sniffed at.

mrginge

JamesFews wrote: »

I am extremely crap when it comes to understanding investments...

Think we can all agree about that.

matttye

kitrat wrote: »

You can still save in another ISA at the same time (just need to look at the details to see what's acceptable).

I already had a Natwest ISA that I was able to keep and run alongside a Help to Buy ISA that I got with them. So I save £200 per month into the HTB ISA and anything on top of that goes into my original ISA.

The interest rate is as good as you could realistically hope for (think it's Halifax that is doing 4%), it's far greater than the interest rate of my bog standard Natwest ISA.

I'm also only expecting to be saving for 1-2 more years but I'm essentially being given an extra £50 a month for doing what I'm doing anyway, not to be sniffed at.

You can save in another ISA at the same time if the bank/BS/etc. you're saving with allows you to do that. You can't just open any two ISAs and save in them at the same time.

kitrat

matttye wrote: »

You can save in another ISA at the same time if the bank/BS/etc. you're saving with allows you to do that. You can't just open any two ISAs and save in them at the same time.

Thanks, I couldn't remember the details.

JamesFews

19lottie82 wrote: »

Of course you can save more than £200 a month! You just won't get more than the £50 a month top up on that than the government is offering.

If you look on the website it clearly states that you can only put in a maximum of £200 a month into this ISA. So therefore to get the maximum 3k bonus you would need to be putting into that ISA for 5 years.


And to the negative posts and sarcasm....grow up.

agrinnall

JamesFews wrote: »

If you look on the website it clearly states that you can only put in a maximum of £200 a month into this ISA. So therefore to get the maximum 3k bonus you would need to be putting into that ISA for 5 years.


And to the negative posts and sarcasm....grow up.

Well as you haven't told us which provider it is we'd have to be clairvoyant to know the specific T&Cs.