Did anyone else do NOTHING with the £250 Child Trust Fund

[WarblingEttie]

I just left it where it was and need to find out where it is as DS turns 18 on December 🤔

What did everyone else do?

@OhFFSMum

Well they had a lots to contribute.

However with yours,find it ,pull it out and get it into a junior ISA? It's easy to move and you've got three year's to grow it?

I paid £20 into my daughter’s every month and her grandparents did the same. She now was about 13k.

Halifax regular kids saver was 10% for the first few years. Pays out annually then you move the balance elsewhere. Pretty sure they're legit....

@TheHouseonHauntedHill so impressed you slugged it out for years. That's stamina, right there.

I found out about Vanguard and Bogleheads on mn. Vanguard is the backbone of my dcs' investments.

Even before that, my insurance agent recommended The Richest Man in Babylon, which gives you an inkling of my age.

www.amazon.co.uk/Richest-Man-Babylon-George-Clason/dp/1505339111

Probably written around the same philosophy as The Simple Path to Wealth.

You can save a decent sum even with very small amounts over time and it is a long haul to leverage compound interest, dollar cost averaging and avoiding overly high charges and tax traps. Choosing the right fund has always been my dilemma but I think I understand the principles.

Halifax Kids Saver is currently at 1%. I would imagine it would be 1% or lower since the financial crisis in 2007. You said your dd is born in 2007, maybe you got 10% for the first year only (even 10% pre-financial crisis seems inordinately high for a savings account).

Can you link to the Halifax product that gives you this rate of return?

I am afraid I share Ziegfield's scepticism.

@TheHouseonHauntedHill thanks for the advice. Would u say that is the best place for it then? The lady I spoke to the other day was saying that now is the best time to invest in stocks & shares as the share prices are essentially at 'false low' and can only go up. That means absolutely zilch to me tbh (can u tell I am NOT good with money? Lol), but I would like to get as much out of the next 3 years savings for DD if I can (and also open something to my other two (much younger) kids also. I just have no idea where to start

Yes mine got about the same. We didn't add to it
either.

I left it in savings account. Moved couple times for interest. Refused to add money to it as had no access to it until dc is 18 which is daft - as dc has used some of current savings to fund high school trips and will use for driving lessons at 17.

I did nothing with my son's - he turns 18 in a few weeks and it is worth around £500, can't believe some are worth so much more without paying in. We've never added to it because we've never been able to. When he was a baby we barely had a spare quid at the end of each month.

Still he is very excited about his free £500! I'm glad we didn't do more cos I wouldn't be able to give equal to his siblings.

Erm genuinely not sure here but I’m pretty sure I missed out It as we didn’t start having a family until 2017- had it gone by then? I was pretty I’ll with sepsis & suspected bacterial meningitis after having DS so was in hospital for a while afterwards and didn’t even think about this until he was about 1 hen I’m pretty sure I looked it up and it’s just not a thing they do anymore- ami right? Or has anyone in NI had children since 2017 and got the CTF? Thanks xx🤞🤞

We did nothing and DD got it last year and transferred it to her savings , it was worth around £500-600.
Feel like we picked a dud one!

Oh don't be so chippy 🙄

Dd1 got hers recently, was £500 originally (lone parent) and she ended up with £931, so not a huge increase over 18 years but better than a kick up the arse.

She just spent most of it on a fancy monitor for her room. She is autistic and spends most of her time in her room, doing digital art/video editing etc so it’s great she’s got something to help her with that, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to spend that kind of money on a monitor for her.

Amazing ! 👏

Halifax did have a good kids savings rate circa 2007 as I set one up for both my kids at the time. It had limits though like a maximum you could save each month and was only the first year or so. So it wasn’t like you could pay in £1000 day one and get 10% interest.

www.halifax.co.uk/savings/kids/kids-monthly-saver.html

2.5% this year which was fixed before the current rises in base rate. Was definitely 4% in 2018 as there's news articles about it. Used it at 10% for a number of years and then 6% for a while. I don't remember how many exactly and I'm not going to go back and check her paperwork because why the fuck am I being asked to justify myself and provide links to easily searchable info?? I didn't do anything with her CTF. I did save elsewhere and researched the highest interest rates available each year. Why am I being accused of lying about that??

Used it and child benefit and invested it into an investment trust for 18 years. Very happy I did.

The Halifax did a special offer fit a short time the poster is correct. Why would she lie. I opened one up in my grand childrens names, one for them and one for my savings. It did well.

@TheHouseonHauntedHill I should maybe look into it (although I do have other small savings pots, and plan to eg help with driving lessons). Also.. does anyone know.. does a child trust fund - or whatever you converted it to - count as savings when applying for benefits? I know on ESA you can have up to £6000 in savings without it affecting your claim, and I think UC is less, so would people be penalised or is CTF investment ring fenced in some way?

It ended in 2011 I think.

@OhFFSMum

You can move it to somewhere like Hargreaves and landsown, then choose your own funds to invest in .

H and l is slightly more expensive, it's where my DC are but I will move them when I get around to it only because the platform fees are slightly more.
However as a platform to invest through I love it, the app is brilliant, it's all very easy to use.

I'm sure others can advise on different platforms.

I found that process very easy.

I struggle with all these types of things, I don't find them easy and I can't crunch numbers but I understand the principles behind it.

Re the false low.

It's like anything that can be over priced or under.

But the intrinsic worth of something can still be there.

When you buy shares you are buying part of a company. So if you had invested all your life savings into marks and Spencer shares, you would have lost lots of money because they fell so far In value ( because as a company it's failing) ,it fell out of the ftse 100.

So buying individual shares is always risky. Jack Bogle said " why look for the needles when you can buy the Hay stack". So index funds have become really popular, because you buy a little of everything and if a company fails like m and s... you don't loose anything.

So let's say you wanted to buy an index fund following the FTSE 100 you are buying a little of the top 100 companies in UK.
Unless you think they are all dreadul and will fail imnently with...no other companies to rise up to take their place ( from FTSE 250) you can hopefully see why they are possibly on sale because the company is still there, working away, selling etc.

Does anyone know how to get the money out? My 12 year old has over $4k in his and I’d love to invest it elsewhere for him. I tried a few years ago and they told me it had to stay in the CTF scheme until he was 18…

The CTF is until 18 I’m sure you can’t take it out until then.

Flippingnora the only thing you can do with it is move it to a Junior ISA, you can't withdraw it any other way as it is protected for them until they are 18.

Awk really? Thought it had ended a good few years before we started trying for a family 🙄🤦🏻‍♀️ Typical! Lol thanks for the reply 😊