What options are there for saving for your kids' future?

hi,

I'd like to know more about child pensions and child savings in general for children aged 10 and above.

Thanks.

If you are saving for children who are about 10, then you have a few options.

There is such a thing as a Child SIPP (Self Invested Personal Pension). I know one head of an asset management business who has set one up for his grandkids and just pays in a small monthly amount which goes into an S&P 500 tracker fund. Super simple. His logic is that this money will sit there for about 5 decades, and as the US stock market is a pretty good proxy for general growth and capitalism, it will hopefully just look after itself.

But this is all super long-term. I think the Junior ISA is a pretty good option. You can open a Stocks & Shares one or a Cash one and you can see our JISA comparison tables to help you choose. Fidelity and Hargreaves Lansdown don’t charge any account fees at the moment so they are good options (think of them like an investment department store, with lots of options but just one account and one checkout). If you don’t quite know what to put in them, I would consider what is known as a "multi-asset fund", or look at Fidelity or Hargreaves Lansdown’s low-cost ready-made options.

Vanguard LifeStrategy range is almost always in the best-selling lists for retail investors and is low-cost and simple. You can buy this on Fidelity or Hargreaves Lansdown. You just need to pick the ‘risk profile’. If the kids are 10, by definition the money will sit in the Junior ISA for 8 years, so don’t be afraid of risk. More volatile collections of investments will almost always do better over the long-term, so do your reading before making your choice.