'Sharing' an S&S ISA - Tracking

RoyalSwank

Hi all,
Slightly odd request. I'll shortly be opening an S&S ISA with H&L.
I have a small lump sum and want to regularly save.I also have a small lump sum for my son (7yo) and want to regularly save for him too.
I want to keep 'his' money in my wrapper so I can decide when / if he gets it.
We won't have an equal share - I will save more for myself, and different bulk amounts might go in (or out) according to circumstances.

My question is, how do I track all this to make sure I know what percentage of the portfolio we both 'own' at any one time?

I had thought about just investing in a couple of broad tracker funds for him to keep them separate from mine. Ideally though I'd prefer just to manage a single portfolio and for us both to have a 'share'. But those shares will 'fluctuate' so how do i track them?

• Is there some software that might help me?
• Does anyone have any ideas to help?
• Am I just going to have to set up a spreadsheet and figure it out that way?

Hope this makes sense and thanks in advance!

stoozie1

I do this with my sons. I just use a spreadsheet and adjust our relative percentages when I add monies.

Will be interested to see if there's another solution though

dunstonh

My question is, how do I track all this to make sure I know what percentage of the portfolio we both 'own' at any one time?

Either use different funds or keep a record of the ratio.

Novice_investor101

I have wondered about this before....
Say I had a SS ISA in my name but wanted separate savings for my two nieces - could I invest 50% into say L&G international index tracker ACC fund & 50% into the same byt Income fund & the overall value would be equal & remain at 50% split even after market fluctuations?

I have done zero research into how charges or growth would work on these, but just wondered?

AnotherJoe

I do this with a granddaughter. Separate fund.

ColdIron

Novice_investor101 wrote: »

could I invest 50% into say L&G international index tracker ACC fund & 50% into the same byt Income fund & the overall value would be equal & remain at 50% split even after market fluctuations?

Only if you reinvest the dividends, some platforms charge a small fee for this

Tom99

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]The easiest way would be to invest your son's money in a separate ACC fund.

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Alternatively if you want to manage all your investments as one, then just keep track on a spreadsheet for example:

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Initial investment £2K for you and £1k for son so split is 66.7/33.3

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]1 year on and your investments is now worth a total of £4k

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Which is £2667 you and £1333 son. Still 66.7/33.3 at that point.

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]At that point to decide to add £500 for you and £500 for son

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]So now £3167 you and £1833 son

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]So from that point until you change things again you total investment is split 63.33% you and 36.67% son.

[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]If one or both of you withdraw fund you do the reverse calculation.[/FONT]

zerog

Tom99 has explained how you might do it, but why does it matter how much is "his" or "yours"? Unless he is making the decisions, it's all "yours" until you give it to him.

Maybe he'll say you invested "his" money in the wrong fund for all those years. How will you feel if you put "his" money in a different fund, and it does better than "your" fund?

RoyalSwank

zerog wrote: »

Tom99 has explained how you might do it, but why does it matter how much is "his" or "yours"? Unless he is making the decisions, it's all "yours" until you give it to him.

Maybe he'll say you invested "his" money in the wrong fund for all those years. How will you feel if you put "his" money in a different fund, and it does better than "your" fund?

Thanks for the answers so far.
I'd like to be able to track / ringfence which is his for various reasons - he might be gifted some money I could use, I might want to withdraw my money at some point etc.

I had thought about just investing him in different funds, but I want to keep things fairly simple, and why wouldn't I want to invest him in the same funds as myself if I think they will do well?
I'll have to think about how I keep my own spreadsheet. Again, this could be a bit of a faff as the proportion will be changing monthly + my Excel skills aren't the best.

I was hoping there might be a more automated, software solution, but it looks like I'll have to decide between one of the 2 options above

AnotherJoe

RoyalSwank wrote: »

Thanks for the answers so far.
I'd like to be able to track / ringfence which is his for various reasons - he might be gifted some money I could use, I might want to withdraw my money at some point etc.

I had thought about just investing him in different funds, but I want to keep things fairly simple, and why wouldn't I want to invest him in the same funds as myself if I think they will do well?
I'll have to think about how I keep my own spreadsheet. Again, this could be a bit of a faff as the proportion will be changing monthly + my Excel skills aren't the best.

I was hoping there might be a more automated, software solution, but it looks like I'll have to decide between one of the 2 options above

Two reasons I can think of;
1. Because there are many many funds, many very similar, and realistically you cannot hope to pick "the best".
As an actual example i spent weeks agonising over which two very similar funds, though with different mangers, to invest in, for a particular allocation, in the end I decided better to split it 50/50 so i could just get on with it, they have pretty much tracked each other exactly for the last 3 or so years since i did that, theres probably less than 0.1% difference.

2. Your investing timescale might be quite different to his, so you might decide to go for slightly riskier funds, or funds in less mainstream markets, or because its for soemone else, maybe more mainstream, less risky.

dunstonh

I had thought about just investing him in different funds, but I want to keep things fairly simple, and why wouldn't I want to invest him in the same funds as myself if I think they will do well?

There are plenty of funds which are similar. You say you want tracker funds (I am going to assume you mean multi-asset funds with underlying passives rather than actual trackers given the small amounts involved here). There are a number of providers that do these and there is very little difference between them (as you would expect with tracker based investments)

I was hoping there might be a more automated, software solution, but it looks like I'll have to decide between one of the 2 options above

You could hold it unwrapped under a designation and not in an ISA.