Child Trust Fund

[Murron]

Any suggestions for the best Child Trust Fund? I plan to save around �40-�50 per month after the initial �250 voucher.

Cheers

[Booldawg]

we went for post office savings, purely because they are well established and unlikely to 'go under' like some fly-by-night companies. After all, you're looking at an 18 year investment.

[Sausagegirl]

Are you asking which type of account (savings or stakeholder) or which company to go with?

It took my husband and I almost a year to decide what to do, and we still had different opinions. He doesn't like the idea that our daughter is the only person who can get her hands on it so just wanted the ordinary savings account that he didn't intend paying into very often.

But I wanted to have a little fun with it and go for the stakeholder in order that she could end up with a considerably bigger sum at the end of the 18 years. Yes there's a risk with the stockmarket but I'd like to be able to give her enough to buy a car, or put a deposit on a house or go and see the world and argued with my hubby that if we did a good enough job of bringing her up, hopefully she'd be sensible with the cash and not go and spend it on being a junkie crack *****.

So, we've compromised. He;s opened his own high interest savings account that he pays into and I've used the voucher to open a stakeholder account thatI pay into. There's an element of competition now!

I decided to go for Fsmily Investments because they know what they're doing. They've been around a long time and we already have other policies with them.

Sorry for the long-winded answer. Hope some of it was useful.

[Sausagegirl]

Oooh, forgot to say..

There was a piece in the money pages in one of the papers the othre week about the fact CTF was a year old. They looked at the different types of account and compared how each had grown with just the �250 voucher, how they'd grown if �10 a month was paid ijn and how they'd grown with other set amopunts being paid in.

Stakeholder outperformed savings but then again, it is only the first year and anything can happen in the stockmarket in the next 18. There's no guarantee you'll get out more than you paid in, whereas there is with the ordinary savings.

[Sparkles3]

go to www.moneysupermarket.co.uk which have a facility to compare the options. Also google Child Trust Fund, there are a number of sites that give independent information on how to choose an account. I have invested our childrens into the stakeholder at HSBC because I could do it online and it was a well-known name. You can move it later, so I would recommend you get it in somewhere so that it's earning interest as soon as possible and you can review over time.