Disappointed we didn’t save in child trust fund?

[Bambootrees]

DD is turning 18 and received the letter, she has £559. It was always in the back of my mind but never sorted it out.

We have spent in other things for them and given them lots of experiences, invested in their education, trips, opportunities, etc; but I can’t help feeling disappointed; especially since other friends are receiving letters and their parents have invested/saved.

Surely their parents must have put money in, its not all tax payers money! If you're using that argument, what about child benefit, used on non essentials?

My son is 16.5 has £7500 in and a further £5000 in premium bonds - I am hoping that when he is 18 he will have £150000 to see him through uni, get a car, insure it etc

I didn’t put anything in it, I saved separately. I didn’t even know the account details. My ex set it up and we split up when DD was a baby. In fact I had completely forgotten about it until she asked about it before her 18th birthday. The government put in £500 and that grew to over £1000.

what scheme was this? As in what did it do for you? The gov added money or something?

Management fees on CTFs increased vastly as the number of providers dwindled. We changed DS's CFT to a Nutmeg JISA a long time ago as the fees were so much better. He is 17 now. We haven't saved regularly for him into this, just birthday/Xmas money as and when, although his grandad has given him £1000 birthday money for his savings each year for the last ten or so years. When I last looked at the JISA performance DS had over £40k in there, although it's probably lower now due to recent stock market volatility. It's certainly way more than the contribution made.

I don't worry that DS will blow it all on the slot machines in Vegas (or something equally dumb) as he's always been included in the conversation and knows the money is for either University or a deposit for a flat and is accepting of that. Of course once he gets the money it's out of my control but I think/hope he will be sensible.

@Lanzarotelady That’s optimistic in a year and a half! What are you investing in? bitcoins or cocaine!!!!!

😃

Move to a lifetime ISA so they get the 25% government top up to help save to a deposit.
Not all 18 year olds blow it, mine didn’t she has move £4K a year into a lifetime ISA to take full advantage of the government top up. She has now grown what she got by another 30% in 3 years.

hahahaI am ever the optimist, but even that is very optimistic from me, bloody hell I would put my own money in that scheme haha £15,000 is the figure I am looking at

My DD will be getting £461 next month. I think it was initially £250 that was given by gov - were there two levels? £250/£500? I can’t remember. My DS who was 18 last year got £1600. Never paid anything into either of them. Too much money spent on education and holidays to have anything left to pay in. DS used his to help pay for a car. DD will hopefully use herself towards travelling in Gap year. The deal with me is I’ll add the same amount if it is used for travel (flights/rail ticket) but if she blows it on other stuff then she gets no contribution from me.

I agree with others. It seems a strangely small amount, but at 18 they just blow it anyway. If it went into a pension, and even if you added to that, it could be massive by the time she retires. That's when people need it.

We did add a bit to the CTF but nowhere near as much as we intended. 18 years has crept up on us very fast.

I am going to set up a pension for him and put some in every month.

Yeah.

My son got around £1,800. Blew the lot on shit. He would have done the same if it was £10k. Some young people are just stupid.

I never told him, but I did same at 18. My mum had scrimped and saved before she died and I had 5k, which was a hell of a lot in 1996. Blew the lot on trying to make a group of people be my friends (they were, until the money ran out).

Thank you, this is probably the best thing to do

The letter says is stock snd shares. DH said she got £250 not £500. Not sure where I got the £500 from. I guess it doubled up.

£10 a month would have made a difference. will try to get over the stupidity. Don’t even know how to put money into it. 😟 DH more clueless than me.

Does it give the date of the fund valuation on the letter? A Stocks & Shares ISA will probably have plummeted in the last week or so because of Trump

I think at the time you were sent a voucher to invest in a child trust fund. If you didn’t, it was randomly allocated to a fund or to cash. Some performed better than others.

We put the original £250 in, added another £250 later and saved £15 a month. DS had nearly £6k in his CTF when he turned 18 in Jan (though it has since been battered by recent ups and downs of the stockmarket since he’s just left it there).

I’m saying this not to make you feel bad, OP, but to demonstrate the power of regular saving if it’s just a direct debit that goes out and you don’t think about. Your DD can easily accomplish this for herself - especially if she’s working. Get her to start a savings fund that she regularly puts a small amount in (and you could also contribute if you wanted) and she can build savings that she’ll appreciate all the more for having saved them herself.

We do save a portion of their investments in our own ISAs. That is because in later years where we were earning more and could set aside more, the dcs hit their 9,000 per year JISA limit whereas dh and I had a higher 20,000 ISA limit.

Due to high inheritance tax, it is not good to put their money in our name when it actually belongs to the dcs. I would prefer to do a mix until we are sure but their money should be in their name once they are shown to be sensible (with prenups etc etc).

I agree it is a leap of faith to trust them with money at 18. That said, the apple does not fall far from the tree. Dh and I are sensible with money. I think ironically the larger the sums they get, the less likely they will blow it. Just to give a hypothetical, 50,000 is a decent sum for a house deposit but 5,000 is not really. So the temptation could be to spend the latter.

I have a son who just turned 18. Yes he discussed with his mates.

As a result, some of his mates are now taking a leaf from his CTF (now ISA) investments.

Oh really, I didn’t know this. Thank you, will investigate this further.

Just read into the lifetime Isas as there are penalty clauses re what you use the money on, and if you withdraw for something other than a house deposit (and there’s a limit on the value of the house) then they reclaim a percentage which can be greater than the money you are given in the scheme. Our CTF provider called us when DC1 turned 16 to talk us through options in preparation. And will call him ahead of his 28th birthday.

If in doubt, I always google Martin Lewis ! He makes things very simple :

www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2025/02/lifetime-isa-martin-lewis-treasury-committee/

Chances are, depending on the fund chosen, the amount it had grown over 18 years would more than cancel out the 10% recent drop in the global market index.

@blueshoes- we have done the same as you in putting more money into our ISAs because we already put the max into their junior ones.
We also live in an area where most properties wouldn’t be eligible for the house ISA thing so that’s pointless for us.

I only remembered about dds during covid and it was worth about £700ish then. I put it in an isa and set up a dd to put £20 a month in, still won't be much but think dd has forgotten about it (she's now 20), so I'll just keep paying in to it until she remembers and then give her what's in it.

Some providers have been helping themselves to generous fees over the years so the fund may not have grown by very much at all