We had a baby on 30th Jan 😯

We’ve been send a few cheques for her, less than £200 total.

Before I just put them into a savings account, is there anywhere else I should consider? I’m thinking maybe premium bonds?

Have you posted the baby yet?

Get some premium bonds, and reinvest the prizes.

This time next year, your kid could be a millionaire or they could have approx £200.

This will determine (from an early age) if your kid is lucky or not 😛

Congrats BTW 🙂

as in, a photo on here?

edit: sorry, first day back at work, finally got it!

just open them a savings account with your bank, that way you can see the balance when you log in online. You’ll be surprised how quick the savings grow.

Presumably she will continue to get birthday/Christmas money and money put aside by you. If so, my recommendation would be a savings account where the money is locked away; there are some pretty good deals out there and it’s amazing how well it builds up over the years, even if only putting small sums away. By the time she’s allowed the money, it could be enough for a car, deposit etc. If child tax credits/benefits and the like are also going in the same pot, even better.

Having only ever won £20 on the Premium Bonds I don’t really see the point in leaving it to chance.

Congrats. Premium bonds. Share ISA ? Index tracking ETF ? I am assuming its for a long term hold. If kept in cash/interest bearing account in 10-20 years it will be worth much less than today in real terms

Congratulations give your baby all your money we used ours for tax-free money laundering purposes

ISA’s probably.

We’ve got the standard child trust fund things for our two, don’t know if they still do these, but recently they appear to be going backwards. Been planning on getting them out sharpish before they’re worth nothing.

They’re both much better off than their parents though.

Edit – Contgrats too – obvs. Aren’t they precious etc.

Some banks to specific baby saver accounts – or at least they used to pre-2008. They were good for the first couple of years of the baby’s life before it was converted over to a normal savings account, so my kids have that for their birthday and Christmas money. Not the best in terms of interest rates, but there’s not much out there that is significantly better and it’s not huge sums of money anyway.

My kids are of the Child Trust Fund generation and we opted out of the government scheme and invested it into an F&C scheme and pay £50 per month per child in as a top up. It regularly outperforms other savings schemes and accounts. Even though the Child Trust Fund vouchers are no longer available the savings scheme is – and others too – obviously not tied to the child now like the child trust funds were.

A work colleague has decided to pay money into a pension for their kids. Not a bad idea. But in reality the best thing you can do for your kids is probably to buy-to-let a flat or property, keep that ticking over with someone else paying the mortgage and hand it over to the kids when they turn 18 or something. I wish I’d have done that now.

“Share ISA ? Index tracking ETF ?“

This is what I need to do for our one. Because

“If kept in cash/interest bearing account in 10-20 years it will be worth much less than today in real terms”

Junior ISA will pay about 3%.

Effective interest rate for premium bonds is down near 1% now.

Tesco current account will pay 3%.
Nationwide Savings Flex Direct saving account 5% (for the first year), you need to open a Flex Driect current account to get this.

Scrub that, this was the case a few weeks ago but looks like not anymore. Annoying as my current Nationwide account account ends it’s 5% period next week and doesn’t seem to be much good to replace it with.

Our boys small gifts went towards the mortgage. View being that it will ultimately give us a much bigger return, and as a family be better off and at some point he will take ownership of the lot / or we may remortgage and draw down. Not sure I get the bother with yet more separate savings accounts to keep track of with measly interest %. We were running 3 123 accounts but they have slashed interest rates too.

Interesting idea with the buy to let, wouldn’t have thought of that.

Congratulations.

I have money in Premium Bonds….its a waste of time. The prize fund is so small now that unless you win the £1m your money is actually devaluing.

I’d invest in a stocks and shares ISA (not a cash one) I invested in 2014 and its currently making 10.1%

I have money in Premium Bonds….its a waste of time. The prize fund is so small now that unless you win the £1m your money is actually devaluing.

Conversely, I have had money in bonds for less than a year and am on my third prize, already beating the bank.

Gonna watch this thread with interest, got the same situation however baby is due in June.

Have thought about opening several bank accounts with “opening rewards” and just moving money around each month to capitilise on the rewards but it seems a ton of effort every month!

Premium bonds was on the list, pay in and forget it. Check once in a blue moon etc, terrible chance of winning though.

FTSE tracker is next on the research list however also seems very complicated.

Share and Save scheme at work is also another option for us but depends how the company does over 5 years.

Id use it to pay off your mortgage early.

Then you can use it to provide a deposit for their first house 🙂

I went with a stocks and shares ISA with a certain amount of money per month split into:
– FTSE 100 tracker
– A Vanguard life strategy fund
– A tech stocks tracker (if the child’s going to be farmed as a data point through social media and the like then might as well make some money from it).

Probably overexposed to the UK in all fairness. But that’s a different conversation.

At close to 18 I’ll probably make a judgement to see if it should be moved into trust. The main point is to give them something to start with in my opinion. Even if you save £10 a month it will be a car when they turn 18.

We are planning on opening a child saving account with the principality, the only reason being my wife heard they were giving away free toy dragons when you open a childs account 🙄

A work colleague has decided to pay money into a pension for their kids. Not a bad idea.

Not a bad idea at all.

First Direct Regular Saver with an ‘annual flush’ into ISAs (cash and investment in alternate years) will grow a nice pot of cash for which to cover their first term at university.

If it’s just the two hundred quid spend it as you’ll be putting that and a little bit more into the next 18+ years of upbringing.

Oh and congratulations and that second response about posting the baby cracked me right up – straight into Classifieds Dispute land that one!

Open a stocks and shares ISA, such as with Hargreaves Lansdowne. It can be in the child’s name as a linked account. Then put it in a fund or two, and set up a monthly direct debit to add a monthly amount that way you get pound-cost-averaging to the subscriptions and hopefully much better growth than in a savings account at 3% max or more likely much less.

But in reality the best thing you can do for your kids is probably to buy-to-let a flat or property

Id use it to pay off your mortgage early.

With £200?

I remember hearing a few years ago that you can open a pension at any age, and it was quite a clever investment if you did it. I guess you’d have to check if it is still allowed, but an 18 year head start on everyone else would reduce some pressure later in their life.

No use if you want them to have it at 18, obviously.

No use if you want them to have it at 18, obviously.

THIS +100

When I look into the future, I don’t want them to turn 18 and have nothing. I needed ready access to capital when I was in my 20s. If I turn 50 and still need help from mater and pater, then something would have gone terribly wrong. And in that case, there’d not be much more I could do anyway!

@anagallis_arvensis
Assuming a £100k mortgage @4.5% over 25 years, £200pcm extra means paying it off 10 years early.
Assuming it’s £200 overpayment per year, it still works out to 2 years early!

Like others I’d invest it in a Junior ISA, stocks and shares rather than cash.

Looking to the future and if you can afford it, I’d have the child benefit paid direct into that account so you are putting away close to £1k per year for their future without noticing (because its money you never had before)

One point to note; when the Junior isa matures at 18 the money is theirs and you have no control over your monstrous teenager’s access to it.

GIven that it may be worth splitting any savings you make between the Junior ISA and another account in your name so you can make sure the savings are used “properly” or can access before 18 if needed.

I’ve asked this before, but what’s to stop you from putting it in a trust the day before they turn 18?