Lifetime ISA- worth it if higher rate tax payer?

[soveryconfused85]

If you earn over 100K, is it worthwhile to open lifetime ISA, or better to just put extra into pension?

If you put £4K into your pension via salary sacrifice, the whole £4k go into your pension.

If you put £4k into the lifetime ISA, that's your take-home salary, so you would actually be putting about £6K of your gross salary into it.

It all depends on what your goals are, what you're using the Lifetime ISA for, your savings, your age etc The lifetime ISA will give you a guaranteed £1K of interest on £4K. Your pension may go up or down in value.

Would your employer match any additional contributions @soveryconfused85?

Assume your pension would be a defined contribution scheme rather than defined benefit.

Is there any chance you would need to access the money early? (Penalties on LISA but possible to withdraw).

I do as there's no benefit in additional money into the nhs scheme and given can't claim till whenever state pension age will be I want to bridge the gap to cut dien my hours over 60

It would be better in a pension as you get tax relief on it. This could be a workplace pension which you would contribute to from pre tax income thus reducing your take home pay (by less than the amount contributed due to 40% tax) or you could open a SIPP which you pay into out of your taxed income, the gov then add 25% of what you put in as tax relief (same as 20% of the gross amount) ie if you put in £80, gov adds £20, you can then claim another 20% tax back from HMRC if you pay higher rate tax so £100 into pension costs you £60.

In a LISA you would only get the 25% uplift and only to a max of £4k per year.

Most people use the LISAs not for pension purposes but more towards saving to buy their first property.

But as the maximum limit for the purchase price remains stuck on 450k for years now, it may be that high earners will buy a more expensive property and so wouldn't be able to use their LISAs anyway. If you don't use the money to buy a property (or keep it in there until you reach 60) there are penalties.

The advantage of the LISA is that the government top up each 4k you save by an extra 1k but I would only use it for the purposes of buying a first property, not for a pension.