Is a LISA right for me?

Mr_Curious

Thank you for setting things out so clearly Cloud_Dog.


In terms of what the money is for ultimately it will be towards retirement. I think the fact that it can be accessed albeit with a penalty is pretty handy if anything unforeseen arises that the emergency fund cannot deal with.


It may just be a case that I stop one of the regular savers and divert regular contributions to a LISA. The 25% bonus is very attractive compared to 5% interest rate!


Thank you again,


MR_C

cloud_dog

You could do a bit of both.... Suppose your RS is for £100pm, you could make an additional pension contribution of £100 which would only reduce your take home pay by £68 and with the remaining £32 add it to the LISA.

The effect of this is that for £100 cost to you your accounts (pension and LISA) would be increased by £140.

Obviously you can dice and slice the amount to suit.

girllikeme1

EJS_Superted wrote: »

I could make additional pension contributions but one of the big factors for me is that my work pension retirement age is linked to my state retirement age, so could increase to 70 or beyond. I don't want to be forced to work to those sort of ages so the LISA can hopefully bridge the gap.

I have just opened one (at 38) for the same reasons - as well as being in my employer's pension scheme but it's linked to retirement age. The appeal of the LISA is being able to access it aged 60.

Even if you're not going to put money into a LISA regularly, even if you just invest £1 for now, may as well open one before you turn 40, in case you have money to invest during that decade of life.

greenglide

Pensions currently are accessible at age 55 (with plans to move up in future). LISA is currently accessible at 60.


If, at some point, the pension date goes past 60 (which implies the SPa date is 70 or later) I would have thought there would be a good chance that the LISA access date would be linked to the same date.


Of course, by then, the LISA will have been well superseded by something else - remember PEPs, TESSAs etc!