stakeholder CTF's and additional savings account for children

[rabbitrabbit]

Hello, we currently have a stakehodler CTF with CIS-I just wondered if anyone had a different stakeholder account and whether you would recommend it?
Also, we're looking into a separate savings account for ds (as he'll get the CTF regardless when he's 18) and was hoping someone could recommend a good savings account if we're looking to save £100 per month (with the aim of letting him have it at 25.)

Thanks

stakeholder even!

hi

Our stakeholder is with the Childrens Mutual, but it hasn't been running long enough to know if it is any good or not! They all look pretty much the same to me in terms of charges etc.

However on a regular savings account, I liked the Halifax Childrens Regular Saver, currently paying 10% gross. Looked like the best deal I could find, but it is an annual thing, and you have to open a 'sweep' account for them to transfer the money into at the end. If you want to save the same amount monthly though it looked pretty good to me.

look here

For comparisons try a website like
www.moneysupermarket.com
or
www.fool.co.uk

Hope that helps!

Another MNer recently told me she'd searched MN for just this question, and come up with me saying the same thing with monotonous regularity!

So for the record, here it is again: Nationwide's Smart account is a really good children's savings account, with a consistently good rate of interest (as opposed to the popular trick of offering a market beating rate for a short period and then quietly lowering it to as close to nothing as possible). And IME the staff are friendly too.

If you want to consider equities (which over a 20+ year period is a reasonable thing to do) you could look at a FTSE all-share index tracker fund like M&G. Fidelity also do one with low charges called (IIRC) somethink like Wealthbuilder. But do check, they have several quite similarly named funds. Both these funds will accept monthly payments from £50 or so upwards. Avoid special branded children's funds as they tend to have higher charges and poor performance.

wrt CTF, only dd2 is young enough to have one, and I picked a non-stakeholder one on the basis that it's a smallish amount of money so it was reasonable to accept a higher degree of risk, so chose F&C smaller companies which has in fact done astonishingly well. But no guarantee that will continue, of course.