How will I get my money out of SS ISA?

jimjames

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82058161#Comment_82058161

Yet you started this thread complaining about changes to ISA rules? What's the difference?

seacaitch

Seems like quite an extrapolation to take one poster's misunderstanding and translate that into being representative of half the adult population!

It should hopefully have been clear I was using obvious hyperbole in order to make a point. The point being that complexification of personal finance products commonly discourages people from engaging with those products. Unless undertaken carefully, political micro-management such as we've seen here can easily have the opposite to the stated desired effect…

While "domain experts" like us can quickly comprehend and adjust to changes, optimising how we can structure our affairs under revised rules, "normal people" don't really respond like that to additional complexity in a subject domain they already have little interest in. The more choices they must make, the more complex the rules they need to interpret and figure out, the greater the likelihood they succumb to status quo bias and choose the path of least resistance by doing nothing.

The investing platforms, whose business depends on getting more punters through the door, understand this which is why some of them regularly campaign for simplification of the rules and of the personal finance product landscape.

Although I'm relieved the Government hasn't done an even more ham-fisted job of these changes, since it appears they may have avoided (albeit TBC…) doing much collateral damage to investors who have legitimate use-cases for cash-like holdings, it's disappointing that a better job couldn't have been done to encourage more people to invest, which was after all the supposed point! To that end, a principle of simplification rather than complexification may have been helpful.

The same applies to the rest of our "tax code" and legislation, <cough> …