Best place to invest £15k for ds 13

[witchofmiddx]

Ds 13 has collected £15k in presents for special milestone birthday. Interest rates so crap at moment, will happily lock it away for 10 years. What to do?

What to do indeed.

Premium bonds. Can cash them when rates go up, but a chance of winning in the meantime.

Halifax have a good child ISA that pays 6% if the parent also has an ISA with them. Admitally you can only invest about 3 and half thousand a year and the child gets hold of the money at 18. (eek! emoticon)

Stocks and shares are risky, but have done well recently.

I think that premimum bonds sound an interesting idea.

Thanks ScienceRocks and Really Tired, I don't have an Issa with the Halifax only an account, but will look into premium bonds

We put some money for our DCs into bonds. They paid out a small amount each year and a tax repayment which could then go into an ISA for some easy access. Might be worth asking an advisor

I second the idea of the Halifax child ISA. We've put in for those for both DC's.

The reason that we will restrict further investment into that cracking ISA is that they become legally entitled to it at the age of 18. We don't want them coming into large sums at that age. We want to save for their university fees and maintenance.

BTW, I think all you have to do is stick £100 into an isa with the halifax to get the benefits of the child isa.

Premium bonds have paid naff all to me, so I would genuinely advise you to look at other children's accounts in preference.

Don't lock rhe money away werw no one can get at it until the child is 18. Inflation will shrink its value.

Thanks Waldric, would have def gone for the Halifax option, hope that helps someone else. In our case we've decided to invest it in short term property deals with fil's property finance company

If you are looking at a 10 year time horizon then you should definitely be considering stocks and shares. Yes, they are more volatile in the short term, but should provide greater return than a savings account and be inflation beating over the long term.

Consider, the UK stock market has returned an average of almost 10% per year over the last 10 years My source. This is not the same as saying that each year you will have 10% more the same way a bank account would. You need to be willing to ride the ups and downs and obviously this will depend on personal circumstances.

Thank you Maursh. Although not confident in stocks & shares i would certainly consider that if it was my money, but probably would not want to risk ds's