Savings Questions?!?!

[ste_bla]

Wife + I are saving up for a mortgage deposit/moving to new Zealand money at the moment and its a fair amount a month £1000ish..

Now I want some interest, I cant be bothered moving my current account to another bank to get higher interest on that account so thats not an option, I currently have 2 current accounts one with Natwest and one with Nationwide

Also I have 2 kids (11 months)

So accounts at easy reach are;

Nationwide
Esavings 3.84
Smart Acount (<18) 3.96
Instant Isa 4.65

Natwest
Esavings 3.38
NetCash ISA 4.65
Young Saver (<18) 3.74

Now I am thinking I should max out my and the wife's ISA's this year to begin with.. now the questions are;

Can the children have ISAs in their name controlled by us (parents) using our (or "their") money

Can I use the kids savings accounts to put our money into as its such a better rate also do they get paid the Gross rate (4.95 for the smart a/c) as they don't pay tax yet?

Any websites/advice would be good.

 

[rpstewart]

Without a doubt Max out the ISAs, anything that's tax free is a good thing. I'm not sure on the ISA rules for kids, I would guess that ISAs are unlikely to be available for them.

The rest would really depend on your attitude to risk. A shares based mini ISA could give a good tax free return but any problems in the markets (which have really only just recovered from 9/11) could leave you with a loss.

Do you have a mortgage at the moment? If so investigating some kind over overpayment or offsetting deal might be worthwhile - you don't earn interest on the money per se but neither do you pay tax on it.

At the end of the day given the sums you're talking about saving and the fact that you have an end goal I would suggest that the best option would be to seek some professional advice from an IFA.

 

[CChrisca]

Have a look on confused.com or moneysupermarket.com and see what the best accounts are for what you want them for. Much easier than trawling all the different banks etc

 

[Clark the White]

Have a look on www.moneysavingexpert.com under ISA's I found it really helpful
the National Savings & Investments has an interest rate of 5.3% and its guaranteed to be .55% above inflation until 2008.

The only downside is when you pay in it has to be at least a sum of £250 and also you have to open one with a minimum deposit of £1000.

Its very safe (and its a government department)

anyway hope this helps!