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Accounting for YouInvest LISA fees

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YouInvest LISA fees for shares are 0.25%/yr, split over four quarters and capped at £7.50/quarter (£30/yr)

They currently do not allow the fees to be paid by debit card or from another account

I have been told if there is not cash in the account they will communicate that the fees are due and the account will go into a negative balance. If not paid (in an unspecified amount of time), they will sell the investments to pay for the fees at the £29.95 telephone dealing charge

I plan to add to the LISA each year, so new money will be added each year

I plan to use the regular investment as a one off investment of the entire amount at a cost of £1.50

I plan to only buy shares, as you can only buy whole shares and the buy cost is not confirmed till traded, the cost is not known and I can only estimate this

The fee is a % of the value, but I dont know how much the investment value might change during the year

How much cash should I set aside for fees?
Should I simply do 0.25% of the money invested and be done with it?

Comments

  • Zorillo
    Zorillo Posts: 774 Forumite
    Fifth Anniversary 500 Posts Name Dropper
    edited 9 May 2018 at 10:24AM
    I'm setting £20.50 aside for this year's fees (was £25 but I've incurred 3x dealing charges at £1.50 due to carelessness) which I think is a bit conservative but should allow for some growth. I will then set aside slight more next year, etc. (Based on a £5k investment including the bonus)
  • ColdIron
    ColdIron Posts: 9,788 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Hung up my suit! Name Dropper
    Your shares will pay dividends?
  • bowlhead99
    bowlhead99 Posts: 12,295 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Post of the Month
    The easiest thing is maybe to just retain a cash float of a tenner or so which is always going to be higher than the next quarterly £7.50 charge. Or if investing all at the beginning of a tax year, so you need to "survive" longer than a quarter, retain enough to cover the fee with a buffer to spare until you get to the next tax year and can top it up again.

    Retaining 0.25% of whatever you just invested is potentially flawed as by the time you get to year two you are investing what you just invested but you're also continuing to invest what you had invested the previous year and the charge is on the whole balance rather than what you just invested right now, so you'll need a greater holdback than what you'd just get by holding back 0.25% on the new money being invested at that point.

    The lost performance from having even £30 idle for half a tax year is only a pound or so (assuming 6-7% returns) so leaving money on hand for fees isnt going to destroy your performance. As you say, there will always be a little bit left over naturally from each purchase due to your purchases not being able to buy fractional shares, but erring on the side of caution probably isn't going to hurt you too much so a complicated plan is probably unnecessary. Just project an estimated "worst case scenario" for fees (based on best case scenario for investment growth, and knowing there's a cap after £12k) and hold some money back based on when you next think you'll get around to funding the account again.

    Better to hold money back than be forced to sell to get cash (or worse, for them to sell at their discretion at a high charge rate), so some over-caution is probably ok.

    Having incoming dividends will help (which is how my mum finances her fees on a tiny sipp) but the divs won't arrive evenly through the year so need to be combined with some sort of cash float.
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