Multiple Lifetime ISAs

pikachuuu

Hi all,

New to this forum (wooooo welcome me!)

I was just wondering: Can I transfer a Lifetime ISA from one provider to another and open another lifetime ISA in the same tax year?

(And yes, I'm aware I can only pay into one of them per tax year)

Thanks for any answers in advance

Alexland

Yes that's fine provided the new provider accepts LISA transfers in. Although I am slightly baffled why you would want the complexity of having two concurrent LISA providers for old tax year and current tax year money?

pikachuuu

Thanks for your answer!

My LISA from last year is a cash LISA, so it has a fixed rate of 1.1% (but another provider is offering a better rate of 1.4%). I'll want to keep this as a bit of a safety net. However, since I'm on the younger side, I'd thought I'd take a gamble with a stocks & shares LISA. Hence, 2 accounts at the same time

Alexland

Are you investing for retirement or saving to buy your first property?

Generally S&S investment is only suitable for periods of 5+ years to manage the risk of withdrawing less than you invested.

Alex

20SmthngSver

You can open another but you can only pay into one. Why you'd have two is beyond me. Just transfer the 1.1% to the 1.4%.

pikachuuu

Alexland wrote: »

Are you investing for retirement or saving to buy your first property?

Generally S&S investment is only suitable for periods of 5+ years to manage the risk of withdrawing less than you invested.

Alex

Buying my first property. But there's also the chance that I might not qualify as a first time buyer - I'm maybe thinking of buying to let? And yes, I'll most probably be investing for at least 5 years.

20SmthngSver wrote: »

You can open another but you can only pay into one. Why you'd have two is beyond me. Just transfer the 1.1% to the 1.4%.

Well, what's wrong with having a stocks and shares one, if I'm willing to invest what I put in?

At some point, I could just combine the two LISAs together, once I know what I wanna do with my money.

20SmthngSver

But you can only pay into Lifetime or S&S up to £4000, or transfer up to that to use your year allowance. You can have both, but only £4000 a year can be put into them.

eskbanker

20SmthngSver wrote: »

But you can only pay into Lifetime or S&S up to £4000, or transfer up to that to use your year allowance. You can have both, but only £4000 a year can be put into them.

It's important to be precise with terminology here - if you actually meant 'you can only pay into a cash LISA or a S&S LISA up to £4000' then yes, that would be right, but as written it's wrong, as you can pay into a Lifetime ISA and a S&S ISA concurrently up to £20K in total, no more than £4K of which can go into the LISA....

20SmthngSver

Why do the S&S ISA's on the Lifetime ISA page so they all have max. pay-ins of £4,000 a year just like the Lifetime ISA's?

eskbanker

20SmthngSver wrote: »

Why do the S&S ISA's on the Lifetime ISA page so they all have max. pay-ins of £4,000 a year just like the Lifetime ISA's?

There aren't any S&S ISAs on the Lifetime ISA page!

The point I'm making about precise terminology is that there's an important difference between an S&S ISA and an S&S Lifetime ISA - the first is a type of ISA in its own right, but the second is a subtype of Lifetime ISA, along with cash LISAs.

Hence it's possible to pay up to £20K into a S&S ISA but only up to £4K into a S&S LISA.

https://www.gov.uk/individual-savings-accounts:

There are 4 types of ISA:

• cash ISAs
• stocks and shares ISAs
• innovative finance ISAs
• Lifetime ISAs [which can be cash or S&S]

You can put money into one of each kind of ISA each tax year.