Should I split investing with my spouse?

DrewMSE

My wife and I are looking to start investing through a stocks and shares ISA and we are looking for a bit of advice.

We will be investing around £500 per month in total.

There is no option that I have found to have a Joint Stocks and Shares ISA and this has thrown us off a little as we combine all our finances.

Is it more sensible to each have our own accounts investing £250 per month each or is it better to invest the entire £500 per month into 1 sole account?

We would save on platform fees if we invested using only 1 account but it feels alien to us to have something solely in one of our names.  I understand that if the account holder was to pass away, there is a special allowance for transferring the ISA to the surviving spouse.  I am thinking that there may be potential downsides to this option that I may be missing?

Each having our own accounts paying £250 each for the same investments seems like a good idea but we don't really want to end up paying basically double the fees for the same investments.

Any thoughts or advice on this would be really helpful.

Thanks
Drew

eskbanker

There is no such thing as a joint ISA - the 'I' stands for Individual, so they can only be held in one person's name.

Most (but not all) platforms charge ongoing fees on a percentage basis, so there'd be no extra cost involved in splitting a pot across two accounts, unless you buy investments that incur dealing charges.

https://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

kuratowski

Your first choice for starting investing should usually be a pension, to benefit from tax relief.  Unless you anticipate needing to access this money before age 55 (soon to be age 57, legislation pending).

Pensions are individual too, like ISAs, and as you each get separate tax allowances, it is a wise move to try to build up both people's pensions where you are planning as a couple.

csgohan4

Pensions is usually more tax efficient than ISA, as ISA contributions are already taxed on the way in

Eco_Miser

Pensions should give at least 6.25% benefit over the equivalent investment in an ISA, but you can't access the money until 55, or 57 or whatever age a future government decides. Also while 25% can currently be taken tax free, the rest is taxable at whatever rate has been set by some future government, potentially at high rates if you want a bigger lump sum than 25% of the pot..

tebbins

Depending on the platform and investment products you pick, you may not end up paying double, as you suggest. For example say you started Vanguard ISAs and invested in Lifestrategy 100 (loads of other options are available), you would pay 0.15% of your account's value a year in account fees, the fund's OCF is 0.22%, plus a bit of transaction costs rounds it upto about 0.40%.
You pay 0.4% whether you have one ISA or split it across 2.
You would only pay more if you picked a platform that had a fixed fee, or dealing fees.
As your accounts grow into a few £10,000s it may eventually work out cheaper to use one of those providers but for now Vanguard is probable your cheapest, and a very simple choice... I think

MX5huggy

Our finances are totally combined where possible but where there is an advantage or your not allowed to have a joint product money goes towards the best place to keep it, and we don’t add complication of holding 2 accounts to split assets “fairly” (more logins). 

So because I have Salary Sacrificed pension option all extra pension savings go to me. Premium Bonds are only held by my wife (we don’t want more than 50k). I happen to have the ISA happens to be with Vanguard so the fee would be the same if we did split it and if we were fortunate to exceed the ISA allowance then I would open one each. But if it gets large other platforms could be cheaper but if it was split fixed fee platform would charge double. Credit Cards are in my name and the other is an additional card holder on each. 

Sea_Shell

Our ISAs are split 50/50 each, roughly.  

But we have had various accounts in either sole name too.

For us, we always have one eye on the "can each of us quickly and independently access sufficient funds in a crisis, without reliance on the other - or using their log-ins"*


* I realise that power of attorneys (or a will if the worst was to happen) would achieve this, but sometimes you just want the flexibility to act immediately, without having to jump through any hoops!

dunstonh

I cant remember the last time I set up a joint investment.     Even where money is joint in terms of how it is treated.   Sole ISA, sole pension, sole GIA.   To have joint you would end up with three logins and accounts (Mr, Mrs & joint).  Plus, when it comes to bed & ISA and bed & pension and CGT allowances, it is so much easier to have it split in sole names.