Lifetime ISAs guide

nikkas wrote: »

My daughter & partner have been investing in H2B for the past year and are due to complete a house purchase in July '17.
The house is outside of London and over £250k so the H2B bonus will not apply as I understand.
Is there anyway to transfer the savings into a LISA and take advantage of the bonuses?

The only way would be to delay the purchase until May 2018, but that could be more costly than going without the bonus.

Tony_Ward wrote: »

Not sure what to do. I'm 40 in July...I work 3 days a week for NHS and the other days self employed. Is it worth getting a LISA? Or just another pension? I already have a house.

It's difficult to say without more information. Presumably anything more you contribute to a pension will attract basic rate tax relief only (no reduction in NI contributions). If so the uplift will be the same. Part of your pension may be taxed on the way out, whereas a LISA would not. But a LISA counts as savings if you ever need to claim means tested benefits.

masonic wrote: »

25% is deducted on anything you withdraw before 60 for a non-"life event". Investment performance within the LISA is irrelevant to this.


Income cannot be "paid away", so it will just be another form of growth within your LISA.


If you use their ready made ISAs, then you'd end up paying those extortionate fees. If you use a cheap multi-asset fund, your total fees could be as low as 0.67%.


Yes, or if you use their fixed portfolios, about 0.65%. There is no evidence their managed portfolio will perform better than the equivalent fixed one over the next X years.


I don't know, but you'd be mad to pay even this much.


Not necessarily. HL and Nutmeg are tied when it comes to the cheaper options.

Remember that Nutmeg is a loss making venture that has had to have several injections of capital to keep going, whereas HL is a profitable and established company, so that could factor into your decision. I'm not in a rush to open a LISA anywhere that currently offers one.

Hi,

I've been doing a lot of reading since this post, about Nutmeg, on the regular S&S ISA thread, and investing in general.

First question: should I be concerned that Nutmeg are a loss making venture? If they went bust, are the assets I've bought through them not ring-fenced? There may be a delay and paperwork, but presumably I'd get my money back, or their business would be sold to another provider?

I've read up on passive investing, and it seems a good strategy - buy funds that match the market and try to minimise fees. That's making the Nutmeg fixed allocation portfolios seem competitive, as there are no further costs for rebalancing or reinvesting dividends.
Would I still be able to beat this with HL, using cheap index tracking funds, or would the extra trading fees make HL more expensive?

I'd need to read a bit more before I was comfortable choosing the funds for the HL option, but I've gained a lot of knowledge in the last week alone.

Finally: Nutmeg talks a lot about investing in ETFs. I've seen people say these have risks, but not what the risks are. Are they something I should worry about?

Thanks