Timing the payment of this year/next year cash ISA

JamesCoffeeKirk

I haven't used this year's ISA allowance yet so would like to put in the max allowance for this year and then do the same again next month. 

I rightly or wrongly opened a Ford Money 1-yr fixed a/c and have until 25 March to put in any payments so I thought I would put in 20k now, and then open another ISA in April and put in another 20k into that thus ending up with two ISAs for the time being.

Is it sensible to transfer in my 3 older cash ISAs now (circa 20k with poor interest) rather than doing that in the next tax year? Or something else?  I'm wondering if I should have opened a variable cash ISA and then transferred the whole 40k across to next year's. I was thinking the interest could be significantly lower when it comes to opening any new accounts from 6th April though.
Any thoughts please?

masonic

I can't see interest rates in April being any higher than they are now. So it would make sense to secure the best rates available now for all of your ISA cash, while also checking there is a benefit to keeping all of the money within an ISA.