14/12/2021
Some people have a habit of waiting until towards the end of the tax year (which is 5 April) to use up as much of their ISA allowance as they can. However, by paying in as much as you are able to early in the tax year, you give your money a far better chance of working as hard as possible for you.
Not only does this shield your investments from tax for a longer period of time, it also gives your money extra time to benefit from ‘compounding’. That’s when the money your ISA makes through growth and investment income is reinvested – and so that, too, has the chance to earn even more for you.
For example, if you had invested your full ISA or PEP (the predecessor of the ISA) annual allowance every year since they were introduced (in 1987) early in each tax year, it would have been worth £1,100,932 at the end of the 2020/21 tax year (assuming the investments had followed the performance of the FTSE All-Share Index).
However, if you’d waited until the end of each tax year to invest your full allowance, it would only have been worth £1,025,023. That’s a difference of £75,909, or almost 7% less than what it could have made.
The value of an ISA with St. James's Place will be directly linked to the performance of the funds selected and may fall as well as rise. You may get back less than you invested.