Saving over the limit for Help to Buy ISAs

Stace255

Hi everyone

My partner and I both have H2B ISAs and are paying in £200 pcm each.

We are actually saving over this amount, the extra currently being stuck in my regular savings and earning next to no interest.

Our ISAs are with the Halifax so we cant open another one this year.

I have just read this on the MSE H2B ISA page

'The most you'll get the bonus on is £12,000 (so a £3,000 bonus). If you have more than that you can still use the ISA to save, you just won't get more than £3,000 on top.'

Does this mean we can pay as much as we want in to our ISAs and benefit from 4% interest on the lot? (I appreciate we wont get any extra govt bonus).

xylophone

You are limited as to the amount you can actually contribute to the Halifax HTB.

Why are you and your partner not taking advantage of high interest current accounts in addition to the HTB?

Remember the Personal Savings Allowance which permits up to £1000 of interest to be tax free.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/personal-savings-allowance

eskbanker

Stace255 wrote: »

We are actually saving over this amount, the extra currently being stuck in my regular savings and earning next to no interest.

You're presumably using the term 'regular' savings to mean standard/normal, but if you look at regular savings accounts in the sense of making monthly contributions, you'll find some decent interest rates on offer....

rtho782

You can't put the extra in the H2B ISA, you can carry on saving £200PCM until you have more than £12k in it (which will take a while!) but the bonus will be capped to £3k, not 25% of the whatever you end up with in it.

Stace255

You are limited as to the amount you can actually contribute to the Halifax HTB.

Why are you and your partner not taking advantage of high interest current accounts in addition to the HTB?


So the info on MSE only applies to some accounts then? Sorry this was not clear from the article.

The rate we have is better than some of the high interest accounts (2%). Just hoping we could move it across to the Halifax and get 4% without having to open further accounts.

jimjames

Stace255 wrote: »

So the info on MSE only applies to some accounts then? Sorry this was not clear from the article.

No the MSE article is correct and applies to all accounts. Best to read what is says in full so you understand the T&Cs

Stace255 wrote: »

The rate we have is better than some of the high interest accounts (2%). Just hoping we could move it across to the Halifax and get 4% without having to open further accounts.

You can get 4% on HTB with Halifax & Santander. That's double what you're getting at 2%. You can also get up to 6% on the amount over £200 if you use regular saver accounts and current accounts but you will need to open accounts.

eskbanker

Stace255 wrote: »

I have just read this on the MSE H2B ISA page

'The most you'll get the bonus on is £12,000 (so a £3,000 bonus). If you have more than that you can still use the ISA to save, you just won't get more than £3,000 on top.'

Does this mean we can pay as much as we want in to our ISAs and benefit from 4% interest on the lot? (I appreciate we wont get any extra govt bonus).

Stace255 wrote: »

You are limited as to the amount you can actually contribute to the Halifax HTB.
<snip>
So the info on MSE only applies to some accounts then? Sorry this was not clear from the article.

Perhaps you've misunderstood either the MSE article or the earlier reply that potentially implied a Halifax-specific limitation - just to be clear, you can indeed put more than £12,000 into any HTB ISA but only at £200 per month (after the first month) for any of them, i.e. it would take 4.5 years to get to (and beyond) £12K....

nb0825

Are you both under 40? once the lifetime ISA is out, you can contribute £4000 per year (£8000 for 2 people), not excluding the balances you can transfer in your HTB isa's. Keep your extra savings in high interest regular savings (HSBC/FIRST DIRECT/M&S ETC.).