Best Child Trust Fund?

[BarbaMamma]

We currently have two with the Children's Mutual but now no 3's here I need to invest her voucher and am thinking of moving all three to a fund with higher returns. Any hot tips you can share?

If The Children's Mutual's one is a stakeholder (which I think it is), it will most likely track one of the UK stockmarket indices (FTSE All-Share or FTSE 100). This isn't a 'low return' option in itself - it will do what the UK stockmarket does, minus 1.5% for charges. 'Higher return' will usually also mean 'higher risk'. F&C Investments (who I do some work for) offer a range of 14 investment trusts through their shares CTF - everything from big, diversified international ones like Foreign & Colonial to more niche stuff like property and private equity, as well as funds investing in Europe, Asia and so on. They all entail some risk to your capital but I guess the hope is that over a timescale of 18 years there should be more ups than downs. Witan Investment Trust is another big, international trust that offers a CTF. If you want to choose your own investments, I know The Share Centre and I think also Selftrade do self-select CTFs where you can pick individual shares or funds.

We got an ETF from Redmayne-Bentley. As its over 18 years, we went for UK property. It's a bit now, but there's another 16 years for things to change.

It's only £250. Not really gonna make much wherever it is. Course, you could add to it, but what you are left with is a substantial amount of money in your child's name who will be susceptable at the probably immature age of 18 to the reams of marketing that pour through the letter box informing them of all the lovely things they can 'have' in return for all their parent's cash. University fees will have gone up astoundingly under the belief that there are all these flush 18yr olds and as parents you will be faced with them as a result of that brand new car sitting in your drive with insurance the size of a small mortgage.

SMacK - makes me feel glad my DD is 10 and will hence be penniless at age 18 thanks to being too old for free government cash!

It's only £250 so hardly going to make much of a difference. However, the uni fees won't yet have rocketted (not that they are cheap now of course) so his potential debt is less.

I went with Family Investments, mainly because they were affiliated with Nectar points and I had a few to use up. I opened with the £250 voucher, did 2 payments myself of £10 each, and transferred my nectar points over to the value of £75, to total £345 deposited by myself (but only £20 from my pocket). This was opened in August 09, and now says it is worth £405, so I'm pretty happy with that. They're obviously doing ok with their investing right now. It's doing a hell of a lot better than any savings account is right now anyway

Do you have stakeholder or non stakeholder CTFs? DCs have nonstakeholder CTFs with the Children's Mutual chosen for a well known Invesco Perp fund. The stock market is obviously volatile but the investment period is 18 yrs so you need to ride out the troughs as well as the peaks.

As selby DD is nonstakeholder children mutual invesco which is the IFAs choice for their own children.