Do you pay into child trust fund?

[stupidphone]

My kids 8 and 10 have no savings. Thinking of putter no a little each month into the child trust fund they had when they were born. Not sure they do this now? Think the youngest has £400 ish in it. Maybe 60 each a month. We get some much paper work as they switch around as is stocks and shares etc. Just hope I don't lose track of where it is! Anyone else pay a regular sum in?

I pay £15 per month into it, so just a token amount but put more into a savings account for her too.

Put 100 in per month since birth - she has about 10k now. She also has other savings as well, birthday money all goes into savings, a grandmother has a separate account for all her grand children. It all adds up.

We've paid in £100/mth since DC was about one (at the time that was the max), but didn't bother increasing it when the max increased - think it is up to £340/mth now?!
£100/mth is the max we feel comfortable saving given that they may decide to go off the rails and blow that lot at 18...our savings definitely take priority over paying in more than that.
It will be very easy to set up paying in a regular amount. No, new CTF stopped being set up in 2011 I think but you can still pay into them.

We put in £75 a month for both DCs (DS is too old for CTF so we paid into an all share tracker fund instead).
Now we've paid the mortgage off, we're increasing to £100 a month and when they are 18 we'll start a homebuyer ISA each for them.
It really adds up over the years, and will go towards living expenses for uni or a house deposit when the time comes.
We have taught the DCs about saving since they were school age, so are confident they won't blow it all at 18.

I've just decreased this monthly amount bearing in mind that they automatically get the money when they are 18, just in case.

Dd doesn't have one as she was born before they were brought in. I refuse to add to ds's as I prefer to have more control over their savings.

I add to my two DCS. Will increase when mortgage is done, hope they spend wisely!

In an ideal world you would save for college/first home etc. And the ideal DC would respect that. But there are a lot of DC who would find it difficult to resist the temptation to blow the lot at 18 when they get access to it. And there is nothing you can do to prevent that.

There's actually a lot you can do to prevent them blowing the lot at 18.
Teach them about deferred gratification, involve them in setting household budgets, show them how saving and budgeting means you get better stuff than if you whack it on the credit card.
Show them the YNAB spreadsheets about how compound interest can massively increase either savings or debt.

There is a possibility dd will go away to college at 16 rather than 18 too so any savings will need to be accessed earlier

Yes. Original CTFs transferred into JISAs 2 yrs ago. DC are aware that these are savings for their further education which they can access at 18 and we hope that it means that they will graduate with less debt since the target is to cover the maintenance aspect. If funds allow, it might actually provide a deposit for a student flat/house. I don't lose sleep over it - I trust that my parental capabilities won't produce complete spendthrift, work shy, hedonists!

Hello, we save £25 a month each in CTF. I'll be looking to up it once I get sorted out with my own savings. I'm doing it so they have some maintenance money at university or when they first leave home.

I am using CTFs (now junior ISAs) for university fees. My DC are already aware that this is what the money is saved for.

Once they reach 18 I will ask them to transfer all of the money back to us so that DH and I can manage it for them in order to pay their way through university. Then there is no temptation for them to fritter it away.

We currently pay into a junior isa but we've decided to open a pension instead for our DC - the rate on the isa is rubbish and as we get the pension top up from the government so think it's a good move. We save £100 a month. We on the other hand don't save a penny :(

We save £25 per month for each child into a CTF /JISA and have done so since shortly after they were born.

Obviously our generation didn't have CTFs, nor did we have university tuition fees but I have a similar situation to having a CTF. My grandparent died when I was 14 and left a few thousand pounds each to me and my 2 siblings. My parents put mine in a high interest account, tied in until I was 18.

DB spent his on having a good time, with no particular large purchase.
DSis spent hers on a once in a lifetime gap year travel opportunity.
I kept mine in the high interest account until I was 24 by which time it had increased substantially ( interest rates were high back then) and put it down as a deposit on my first house.
So all 3 siblings did very different things with a similar sum of money.

So they won't necessarily blow the money at 18. By the late teens, you often have clues from the young person's personality, whether they're going to be a spendthrift or a saver / planner.

Kustardcat the money is legally theirs. What if they don't want to transfer it back to you? Surely when they're 18, the point is that they have to learn to manage their own money?

DH and I are putting money into savings accounts created for our children but in our name. Roughly 75% of what we can save for them or money that is given them by grandparents is going into that. This is because we want to decide how that money is used, first of all on higher education if they decide to do that, or on other start up career costs or else towards deposit on a house. No chance I am giving such large amounts to my children without any influence on how it is spent. That's regardless how mature I raise them to be, I just don't think an 18 year old really gets money. The other 25% goes into ISAs in their name, and that is money they in theory will be able to spend as they like.

It might be legally theirs but they understand that it is simply the most tax efficient way for us to save for their university fees. So they totally understand that is what it go towards.

And I would rather handle that money myself than give them the temptation to blow it on silly things. I will probably give them a chunk each year of uni but not all of it at once. They can still learn to manage their own money without having the temptation of thousands of pounds in their bank accounts.

I plan to make them give me a detailed powerpoint presentation on things like 'What are capital expenses I might need money from savings to pay for in the future (car/deposit for house/gap year flights/etc)(with estimates of cost) and 'what are regular expenses that I need to earn enough to cover every month'. otherwise they may never learn of the existence of the account. However they show signs of being frugal with their own money, they only seek to fritter mine.

No as you have no control over what they spend it on as it's in their name.
I save in an isa instead so I can have control of what they spend it on.

No way - I wouldn't want the money inaccessible to our family, or for DC to necessarily get it all at 18. A lot can happen in 12+ years. We save in the hope that we can give to our children, but if shit happens I want to have choices.

Also it cannot be accessed till they are 18. They may have a good reason to need it before eg driving lessons for example

I don't but only because Dd didn't get one and Ds was backdated. Both children had a savings account opened the day they were registered.

I pay £30 a month into DS CTF and some of his birthday money goes in there too. He's got about £6k in there so far. But he also has a pension.

We paid in £100 a month for the the first year and any birthday money, etc, while they were too young to be able to spend it.

So they've each got a few thousand for when they turn 18.

We're nervous about giving them huge sums at that age (I'd have blown it; DH would - and did - use it wisely, and we should not want rob take the risk!)

Instead, we're overpaying our mortgage so that it should be finished by the time they come to need/want cars, uni fees, house deposits, etc. so we'll be in a better position to help them