Child Trust Funds - unexpected low return

Iceberg_Bide

My daughter has just turned 18 and her CTF paid out but with extremely disappointing return
Paid £20 a month in for 18 years and only got £3250, is that to be expected or has something gone horribly wrong here
:(:(

noh

Depends on what sort of CTF it was.
Was it a savings or investment account?

CTFs did not become available until April 2005 so you can only have around a maximum of 13 years payments plus the initial bonus.

How much has actually been paid in?

jimjames

Is that as cash or investments? If investment, which company and which funds?

If that number really is correct then something sounds wrong. £20 x 12 x18 = £4320 so your return is less than you paid in.

Are you sure the numbers are correct?

bowlhead99

jimjames wrote: »

Are you sure the numbers are correct?

They are probably not, as CTF only launched with the free money from the government going into the accounts in late 2005 and people starting the account then would have only been putting in for just under 13 years, not 18 years?

Also, only children born after September 2002 were eligible for CTF vouchers, and would not be old enough to turn 18 yet... People born before Sept 2002 (e.g. someone born in Feb 2000 and just turning 18 now) could have done a Junior ISA instead, but only once the Junior ISA was actually launched.

If it was really started by February 2000 with £20 a month going in ever since then, was it not a CTF but in fact some children's saver / investment bond instead?

surreysaver

That's why I never paid any of my own money into my child's CTF, and it has now been converted into a jISA

bowlhead99

surreysaver wrote: »

That's why I never paid any of my own money into my child's CTF, and it has now been converted into a jISA

What's why?

xylophone

Paid £20 a month in for 18 years

As has been discussed above, these payments cannot have been made into a CTF for eighteen years.

Could it have been a Friendly Society Tax Exempt Plan?

surreysaver

bowlhead99 wrote: »

What's why?

They're poor value for money - high charges, lack of competition. Typical Labour Government - a nice idea that wasn't enacted properly.

bowlhead99

surreysaver wrote: »

They're poor value for money - high charges, lack of competition. Typical Labour Government - a nice idea that wasn't enacted properly.

Ah I thought from your comments you were implying that the reason you never contributed to your child's CTF back in 2010 or earlier was because OP's return acheived over the several years to 2017 didn't seem to be much of a return because they got the dates wrong, which would have been a strange reason not to pay into the CTF.

cloud_dog

surreysaver wrote: »

They're poor value for money - high charges, lack of competition. Typical Labour Government - a nice idea that wasn't enacted properly.

Or people (parents) didn't enact their responsibilities correctly perhaps?

I've never paid any charges on our CTF (still running). Admittedly had to pay some dealing charges. Had access to virtually any investment I wanted (like an adults ISA), and it has grown significantly (all contributions stopped after the first few years).

Free money. Free of tax. What wasn't to like.

Reaper

I still have a CTF for my son, never converted it into a JISA as I'm happy with it where it is. We still contribute to it each year and it has performed brilliantly, tax free forever.

To write off all CTFs and JISAs as worthless is hard to fathom. Maybe you just took out the wrong one.