Child Trust Fund - - Cash or Equity Stakeholder ? How much do you put in? Which one? CLUELESS

[kalo12]

haven't got round to doing this in 10 months cos I am clueless.

Under the impression that most people get an equity stakeholder and the na savings account aswell.

Would probably put ten pound a month in plus birthday money from relllys.

What should i get? Am thinking of going with nationwide.

Can you change your mind and change from cash to equity or vice versa after a period of time?

bump

we have ethical stakeholders ones, have lost £1000 this year

gosh, sorry for you, but surely this means that if things are at rock bottom they can only go up? or is that way too simplistic?

yes I agree, we're taking the long view and assuming that it will pick up, but we're only paying in £10 a month, have halifax savings for decent return on money

bumping again

We've set up F&C Tracker Stakeholder trust funds for our 2 dcs. We pay in £20 per month. They will have gone down in the last year, but we've taken the view that over 18 years they should do better than if you just put the cash in a building society.

We had equity stakeholder funds for both DS's child trust funds with the Nationwide.

But after recieving a letter from them informing us that all the equity stakeholder funds they had would be moving to another provided and giving the current climate we opted to transfer the accounts into cash ctf's (which would be staying with Nationwide).

Easy process with no troubles, although I have to admit that I haven't added any funds to either of the DS's CTF's, as I have Nationwide Smart2Save accounts for them both and all their gifts go into there along with regular weekly saving from me.

DS1 who is 5 has reached his £100 tax limit on his savings now, not sure what happens next though, as the money in his account has both come from myself and DH as well as gifts from other family members.

provided provider (Legal & General if I recall correctly.

Remember that any money you put into a CTF becomes your child's property at 18. You have no control over it from that point so you cannot bank on it as money for university, or whatever.

And don't worry about losing money over the short term - it's got 18 years to settle down. If it hasn't by then we'll all fucked anyway, so a poor CTF will be small beer .