How much saved for your kids?

[darada]

Could I get a sense check of how much money and where you have saved or invested for your kid(s)? I have a 7 year old and he has both a junior ISA and a junior SIPP.

I don't like the idea of a big amount of money in their name that they can blow on a round the world trip and partying if they decide to. But on universal credit the amount I can save in my name is not enough to make the loss of help in the here and now worth it. I don't plan to be on UC for the rest of my days but it does affect my ability to take care of my kids' futures.

13 year old, £110k, 11 year old £105k, 3.5 year old, £42k

But my parents did the same for myself and my DS… They also taught us about stocks and shares at a very young age which I am doing for ours, including getting them to invest with small amounts of money saved from pocket money so that when they get hold of the big sums they know what to do!

I didn't save cos life was just so tight back then. One has gone through uni and one going next year that we will pay her accommodation for - that's £196 a week by the way now guys!! If your household income is higher than about £35k ( I think) you are expected to pay. We can pay this for her.I've also earmarked £10k each to them as a wedding gift from my investment savings.

I had saved £10k each for my two kids which they got at 18. Exh has saved about 3 times that and they will get that at 25.

they are both good with money and they haven’t really touched the money yet at 19 and 21.

Nothing. He has a wonderful childhood and has everything one might want or need. He will have my house when he is older.

DS1 age 2 has about 2.1k
DS2 age 9 months has 1k

I’ve saved a tenner a month each into a junior s&s isa for my DTs since they were born. It’s in their own name, and they’ve currently got £665 each. I’m fully aware that’s diddly squat really, my thinking is it’ll basically pay for a cracking 18th bday party for them! I also pop any cash gifts they’re given in there too (they’re only 5).

I have an isa where the bulk of our savings go for them in my own name (£130pm), which is ring fenced for a house deposit contribution for them when the time comes. Uni fees we'll cover from income if they go. I hate the idea of saving for their entire life for them to then squander it on unimportant shit so it stays in my name.

I will up the contributions as and when I can do, but currently renovating the house so can’t see it happening for a while!

We managed to give £30k to ds on his 18th. We have told him it is his money to spend on sex, drugs and rock n roll, but it would be wise to keep towards a house deposit (unless he wants to live with mummy and daddy forever), and to work/save for day to day things like car costs, holidays etc instead which he had taken onboard so far.

He is at uni (Scotland, free tuition, living at home/free commuting, working PT), doesn't need a maintenance loan so far and not incurring student debt which he knows is an extremely lucky position to be in compared to his rUK peers. We house/feed him, and agreed to pay for car insurance (currently £800/year) during uni as our uni contributions, we give him cash for each xmas/birthday, but otherwise his PT work pays for his clothes, fuel, phone, gym, socialising etc and he saves for the cheap holidays he has with uni friends.

He plans to feed the £30k into a LISA over the 5 years of uni so he will have another £5k + any interest. We are also adding bits to it when we can (but prioritising our own retirement now!), so expect when he finishes uni at 23 he will have somewhere between £40-50k as a start towards a house deposit.

If you can afford it starting saving young does add up. I put just £20/month into my great nieces bank account, + £50 at Christmas /birthdays (I get her just a small token present such as a book as she gets too much a lot from nieces friends) and that will boost her savings by £6k + interest by the time she is 18.

Thanks for the suggestion! I’m a higher rate tax payer and have other savings, so the tax is a bit brutal

None as I couldn’t afford to at the time. However, I’m set to inherit a good amount myself (although that’s from my parents so I’d rather they’d be around for many many more years to come rather than inherit money !) so will ensure they get enough from that for a deposit for a house/flat from the sum.

My 2 year old has a JISA and a SIPP. We invest £100/month into the JISA and £80/month (plus tax relief - so total input £100/month) into the SIPP. We also invest around £1000/month in our own names, to be divided between our 2 year old and her planned sibling when they are adults and the time is right. We are likely to get significant inheritance from both sides of the family at some point too, and we will look at how this can best help our children when the time comes too.

Honestly never even occurred to me to save money specifically for my children, this thread has been an eye opener!

Our families are not big on expensive presents and definitely never give money as birthday/Christmas presents (with the exception of my nana who will give us money and we will buy a toy or something similar with it as she can't get out to the shops easily). So the only money they get given to them has been christening money (well, my eldest has anyway as my youngest hasn't been christened yet!). So ~£500 that I chucked into a S&S JISA.

Any spare money we have is saved into our S&S ISAs. It's not specifically for anything or anyone, but we never withdraw from it and see it as a long term savings pot. Our general financial aims are to be able to help out our children with uni and house deposits etc so this would just come out of our general long-term savings pot, I suppose.

My plan is to give them around £1k-£2k each on their 18th bdays, for driving/car insurance/holiday/towards uni life.
And to be mortgage free at 55. At this time they will just be finishing uni/early 20s, so if I downsize I could help them with deposits/weddings etc as and when.

We put £100 each month in CTF for each kid, now worth about £30k each. Hoping they'll do something sensible with it, but it's theirs to use as they want. Intention is for it to help fund university. I'm glad we did do it as CTF as we divorced and this meant the kids' money was protected.

We have £3,600 in a JISA for our son and currently contribute £100 a month to it. Plus I add the proceeds of anything of his I sell.
I wished we’d been able to start this from birth for him, but the money just wasn’t there. He also has £20 a week allowance, paid to his bank account. He spends half, and saves half, into a decent interest savings account.
We encourage him to the do the same with birthday money, keep half to spend, save half.
We hope that he sees his savings account as saving for things he may want, but his JISA is for things he will need. (House deposit/career training etc).
He is 12, and knows the JISA is there. We plan to offer to carry on saving into it (and its new iteration of an adult ISA) between 18 and 25 for him, whilst he is at uni/studying/travelling and generally transitioning to adulthood.
hoping it will be a meaningful amount for him to either keep growing/contributing to, or use for the big stuff.

£250 CTF from government plus whatever interest it makes. Likely to be about £300ish when 18

You will hopefully get a bit better than that, if you maintain an average of 3% interest over that time you should get just over £12k including the interest.

Over the years we have actually saved around £15k for two. However, it has grown to an amazing amount due to my DH investing it very astutely. They will both have money for very decent deposits for houses when ready and no doubt it will prob grow more. The lesson is don’t keep it in cash as inflation wears it away

Similar for us.
Saved £50 pcm for each of our twins, had to stop it periodically when broke. Now putting in about £200 pcm but again, that could change.
Currently they each have about £40k in cash and sticks and shares isa (nsandi and nutmeg respectively).

Ds was also the recipient of a CTF when a baby. This encouraged us to add the child benefit to it every month and now he's 18 it's worth £23k (it was worth £26k but plummeted during covid). He has also just received an inheritance of £10k from his gran. Some of this will be used towards university starting in September as he'll only get the minimum maintenance loan. The rest will go in LISA's to use towards a flat deposit.

I think if it wasn't for the CTF I probably would have been a bit more hit and miss with the savings. So glad he now has this lump sum as we are public sector workers on average salaries.

None. Well they have some money given by relatives for birthdays etc, but nothing that we have saved for them is in their names. We have savings, but we're not maxing out our various tax free allowances ourselves yet so I see no need to save it in our children's names. We can give them money as and when they need it, but I'm not comfortable with an 18 year old having the potential to blow a house deposit on partying.

Op I'd say your ahead of the game with having both isa!

We started saving for DD when I was expecting. We were advised to each open a stocks and shares ISA for her, mine is low-medium risk and DP’s medium-high. We put £100 a month into each one. DD has just turned 5 and we have about £10k between us for her.

my dc had birthday and xmas cash saved, then if they wanted something big, they could use this.