ISA Bonus 26 February 2018 at 7:01PM in ISAs & tax-free savings 3 replies 471 views

Save£££

I have £4000 in a normal savings account. I have just opened a Skipton Society LISA and thinking of also opening a help to buy ISA and transferring £2000 into each.
Is the bonus on the H2B ISA added annually or only on added when you are ready to buy?
If annually, would it be too late to qualify for the bonus? ( as would need three months to transfer the minimum of £1600)
Or would i get 25% annually of whatever is in there?

Rich2808

The help to buy isa is solely for first time buyers of any age. You can only invest £1200 in month one and £200 a month thereafter. When you buy you get 25% of the amount saved up to a maximum of £3,000 (it would take 4 and a half years to save the £12k needed for the maximum bonus). You can close it at any time - for example if you buy a property over £250k (outside London) or £450k (London) so don't qualify for the bonus.

The lifetime isa can be opened by anyone under 40 whether they own a property or not. You get a 25% bonus on what you save (i.e. a max £1k on £4k a year) but can only make penalty free withdrawals before age 60 if you are a first time buyer and use the proceeds to buy a home.

Both attract interest of course from the provider - assuming you take out a cash LISA (Skipton are the only providers). However most LISAs are stocks and shares based.

So you need to tailor your investment to the product.

eskbanker

Save£££ wrote: »

I have just opened a Skipton Society LISA and thinking of also opening a help to buy ISA and transferring £2000 into each.

Just in case you haven't already come across this when researching so far, you can't get the 25% bonus on both a HTB and a LISA if you're buying your first property, it's one or the other....

rx8wayneo

Excellent, Thank you, for the breakdown