LISA investment advice? (Lifetime ISA)

Hi everyone,

I know that T212 doesn’t as of yet support LISA (Lifetime ISA) investments, but do any of you on this platform currently have one and any tips or advice on how to save/invest through an LISA?
A free £1000 per year doesn’t sound too shabby, just sucks the money has to be locked away.

Toying with opening one, would love to hear all of your thoughts. :slight_smile:

I’m not eligible for one due to my age, but I’ll toss my opinion here :slight_smile:

it depends!

  • a- if you are using Lisa for saving for a mortgage deposit, I think this is the most useful scenario and 200% worth having one.

  • b- you are not saving for a mortgage and money will be locked until 60

    • b1 you are earning less than 50K a year, so you get only basic tax relief from SIPP contributions
      • b1-1 you are not planning to retire when you are 55, you’ll wait until at least 60 = LISA and SIPP has the same benefits so does not matter much (except all dividends in SIPP are 100% tax free including witholding tax from US)
      • b1-2 you are considering to retire at 55 = contribute to SIPP
    • b2 you are earning more than 50K a year so eligible for further tax relief = SIPP, you’ll get 2000 for every 4000 contributed compared 1000 from LISA
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I took one out with Moneybox, but have since now fit into @kali’s category b2, therefore no longer contribute to it.

Cheers guys, food for thought. I will have a look then, as the property scenario isn’t going to work out for me, then it’s the retirement portion - and weighing up that is worth the wait.

Is there any scenario where you’d want to invest in both SIPP and LISA? Since you can only invest up to 100% of your annual income into a SIPP, thinking maybe people with large savings or passive income streams would funnel that into the LISA while putting 100% of their salary into SIPP…

Or am I thinking too hard here?

no you are not stretching the idea.

if you are consistently investing 100% of your annual allowance into SIPP, you can take advantage of the LISA as well.

Now just to get paid lots of money to invest into a SIPP and also have money left over to invest into LISA and a S&S ISA AND enough to live on :thinking: sounds tough…

yeah I doubt if there more than a few thousand people able to do that consistently year after year, if that.

I managed to fill all my allowances this year, but it was an anomaly for me, since I had a very good year on the trade side.

Going back the the LISA VS SIPP, the real kicker seems to come by the limitations on taking money out of a SIPP, as it’s taxed … versus in a LISA it’s all tax free and you can get the whole lot out in one go. Only downside I can see, is the age limit being 60 vs 55. But from what I read, even SIPPS are now 57 in a few years time.

Hate the gov for constantly changing the rules. It’s like they don’t want to give us all free money :rofl:

taking out money from SIPP or any other pension is a long and complicated subject, there is a tax free limited lump sum you can take out, but that limit is 25% of your SIPP. So I am gonno guess that’ll be bigger than most LISAs accumulated even at 25%.

and you can balance out, some withdrawals from SIPP and some from your ordinary ISA/LISA and be mostly tax free depending on your lifestyle.

@Richard.W has more knowledge about these subjects, i make things up on fly :stuck_out_tongue: , he can correct me if I am wrong or put more light into it.

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For anytime thinking about a LISA, Hargreaves Lansdown is the cheaper than Moneybox. Just to bear that in mind

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Poor Richard, that guy has enough on his hands dealing with the 20+ daily tax questions lol!
Toying with making a donations box for that guy, he needs some reward for the tax essays he prepares. :smiley:

I’ve always felt pensions seemed a little bit like a scam, so im a little wary to say the least. I really must have a closer look at SIPPs, but the old adage rings in my mind - you don’t get anything for free in this world, so where is the catch :sweat_smile:

he is a lot more patient with young people than I am and he tries to explain things patiently :slight_smile:

it is not necessarily free money quote on quote, you are just getting the tax you’ve paid from your income back. Last year there were rumours about removing the higher rate tax relief and limit it to basic rate. I am sure they’ll try again some time so use it as much as you can while it is there. but it’ll be political suicide for tories,

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I am gratified that my posts on tax are appreciated. I have had to learn a lot about it 1) because I don’t like paying tax without understanding how it is calculated 2) tax planning can have a big effect on investment returns, 3) there is satisfaction in learning.

I have sometimes in my life employed professional accountants and learned from them some tricks. (One such accountant offered me a job at his firm after having me as a client.) It has been a small hobby to learn more. I browse from time to time forums like taxationweb.co.uk and I read the HMRC pages. For part of my life I was subject to both US and UK tax even though living only in the UK. US worldwide taxation is a blight that people here are lucky not to have (as Trading 212 will not accept US persons as clients).

We have a SIPP for my partner with AJ Bell. Anything that goes in is free of income tax at the marginal rate. Someday, and after age 55, it can be withdraw with 25‰ tax free, either as lump sum at the start or as 25% of every withdrawal.

It is interesting to compare SIPP and ISA and INVEST. Suppose marginal tax rate in work and in retirement are both 40%. What should we do with a spare 10000? Suppose growth will be 100‰ between now and the time of spending in retirement. Let’s ignore dividend income and think only of capital gains.

ISA : 10000 earnings is taxed down to 6000, invested in ISA, 100% return, we now have 12000 which can be spent tax free, so 12000 available to spend.

SIPP : 10000 is invested tax free, 100% return, we now have 20000, which can be spent 25% tax-free and 75% taxed at 40% rate, so effectively we pay 30% tax rate and have 14000 available to spend. If we are a lower rate taxpayer in retirement paying 20%, this becomes 17000 available to spend.

INVEST taxable account : 10000 is taxed down to 6000, 100% return, we now have 12000. There is 6000 capital gains, taxed at anything between 0 and 20% (depending if we can use the 12300 annual allowance and possible changes the government might introduce), so have between 10800 and 12000 to spend,

Many will know that there are rules about contributions to SIPPs. There is a lifetime allowance of a bit over ÂŁ1m on how big your pot may grow. Beyond that a penalty tax rate of 55% is applied. There are also annual limits on how much higher earners can stash in a SIPP.

TLDR : many of the UK investors on this platform might benefit from opening a SIPP. You can have one in addition to any workplace pension. The downside is that you cannot withdraw until age 55, and that age is rising.

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I was always aware of this limit but I always thought it was ÂŁ1,073,100 of contributions.

now reading hmrc guidance

Lifetime allowance

You usually pay tax if your pension pots are worth more than the lifetime allowance. This is currently ÂŁ1,073,100.

#sad
there is a good chance I’ll hit this in less than 10 years, if nothing goes catastrophically wrong.

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Life goals man … :clap: :metal:

my apologies, i did not mention it to boast about it. I think most people contributing regularly from early ages will hit this limit. It might seem like a far away target but time flies away without even realising.

I envy so many people in these forums 18-20 years old and starting investing, I wish fewer of them were concentrating on getting rich fast with 3x leverage tesla :slight_smile:

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I’m 32 and only just getting savvy.

I had a good time but man I wish I started earlier.

#sad indeed.

Crazy to discourage successful investment. HMRC still gets tax on withdrawals, so ultimately it should be better for tax revenues if SIPP pots are allowed to grow as much as possible.