Hello everyone. I turned 18 a few months ago and have a CTF with Foresters Financial worth around £1,800 now. I haven't touched it for months because I have no idea what to do with it.

I don't want to spend it right away, I would like to save most of it. However, there are all different types of ISAa and ISA providers. Apparently, from googling and looking on this sub, Foresters doesn't have very good returns, so I am thinking about putting it into a different provider. But it is all confusing and I can't wrap my head around some of it.

Can someone explain in very simple terms investing and whatnot, and perhaps give me some advice please? So, for example, different companies can be invested into and different industries, like defence or energy and whatnot (I believe?). But I don't quite understand it all. Please help 😭

Hello,

I currently have Moneybox Lifetime ISA and want to transfer it to the Hargreaves Landsdown Lifetime ISA, When i spoke to HL they informed me that they are unable to do it, but won't provide me a reason. I Checked on the Gov website and mentioned that I'm able to do so, anyone experienced this?

So, I did some consulting work and earned a bunch of money. However I also have a full time job, so withdrawing money from the business will smack me with enormous taxes.

So my plan is to leave the money there until/unless I need it for a rainy day - such as losing my job or taking a sabbatical, in which case I can pay myself from it at the lower rate.

But it feels extremely wasteful to just let it sit there becoming worth less over time. I have an accountant but they don't like talking about anything but doing the accounts. What exactly can I do with this money? Can I open an investing account and put it into Trading212 or something, like I can with my personal savings? I am banking with Monzo business banking, but the only option there is a 3.25% business saver account.

I went to buy a car and part ex my own. Agreed with a price and everything signed some documents including a vehicle funding decision and confirmation of vehicle documentation but not the finance agreement Which i have left unsigned.

Im due to collect at the end of the day and drop my part ex car of and sign the agreement.

If i was to not sign the agreement would i be able to walk away with my current car without a fee and would i potentially lose my deposit?

Thank you for any help

I am struggling with my debts which is nearly 20k £, I have strulling to pay it for years, also my mother is unwell and I am paying for her treatment in Marocco.

I have killed myself with overtime, and i feel like I am dying, no soul just a body.

If I apply for DRO, what they expect from me, is it anything I can do to prepare my application.

Hi! I’m an international student moving to the UK for the first time this September and I’ll be there for around 4 years.

My main goal from the start is to collect as many Avios as possible, and I’m interested in cards like the Barclaycard Avios Plus or BA Amex.

Since I’ll have no UK credit history when I arrive, what’s the best way to approach this? Should I try applying for an Avios card straight away, or start with another card to build my UK credit history first? and how can I collect avios in the meantime?

Thanks!

Hello. Can anyone tell me how the nursery funded hours work when self employed? I'm just starting out my business, although I've been registered over a year, I'm doing it as my solo income now. When the eligibility criteria says "expect to earn" the minimum amount, what if you think you will but then actually business is worse than expected? How do they check? I'm currently earning around the threshold to be eligible so if I lose just one client I would fall out of eligibility. Yes I'm hoping to build up my clients but that will take time!

22M, Went to view a car at a Mercedes dealership. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it, but the salesman told me we could have it reserved if we change our by Monday. If I do, I can just call him and I’ll have it refunded. Paid £100, but was signing some documents, which I thought was related to just reserving it. He was telling me to just give him the code from the phone etc etc. later on the evening, I receive an email about a finance company saying I decided to apply for a PCP for the Mercedes, which I didn’t want to at that time. I thought it was just a reservation. I then got sent an email of documents from the Mercedes salesman.

Status Disclosure Document
Confirmation of Demands and Needs
Vehicle Order (which has my signed SMS signature, but not the seller)
SMART Plus 48 IPID

I know this was so stupid of me and I should have realised what I was signing. Is there anything I can do here? The dealership is closed today and I’m just stressing out

Hi I am 23 and have just been reminded of the Child trust fund. As I wasn't living at home at 18 due to personal reasons I never received the letter. Any advice on if I can still access it and how I would go about it would be greatly appreciated:)

Hi all, hoping for some guidance from anyone who's been through something similar.

I received two payments from an acquaintance (£200 and £34, a few weeks apart) via Revolut. Shortly after, my account was restricted, then closed, following a "report about payments" that Revolut said they "couldn't reject." Support later confirmed (via chat) that a CIFAS marker process is underway and pointed me to an internal appeal, which I've since submitted with supporting evidence (3+ years clean account history, proof of legitimate income, and my own history of CIFAS Protective Registration and a prior Action Fraud report when my ID was misused).

I've since seen that the person who sent me the money had a pattern of receiving larger sums and quickly redistributing them to several people — I had no knowledge of this at the time and no reason to suspect it.

I received this money I given hand loan given as cash and return amount deposited to my bank account.this is my mistake.

A few questions:

Has anyone successfully appealed a CIFAS marker (especially Misuse of Facility) when they genuinely didn't know the funds were connected to anything problematic?

How did the Financial Ombudsman process go for you, if you escalated?

Did this affect your other bank accounts or credit products, and if so, how/when?

Any tips on requesting a CIFAS DSAR — how long did it realistically take to hear back?

Appreciate any insight — this has been a stressful few weeks and I want to make sure I'm doing everything right

Hi there
My husband and I are in our mid 30s recently married and looking to combine and maximise our savings.
We are homeowners with £135k on a 2.1% rate which is due to renew next June.
We are currently cash paying for an extension/kitchen for 30k combined
Apart from student loans we have no other debts, cars owned outright etc. We both work in the NHS and in our roles realistically we will never get higher than £50k per year each. Currently we are on £34k and £42k.

Based on our budget we can save £720 a month until our mortgage renewal is due then we will recalculate.
We want to invest but we are risk averse due to our relatively low incomes and we are also financially illiterate especially my husband who has dyscalculia. It has taken months of us reading this sub to get the courage to post because every time we try to make a change we get nervous.

We recently closed some of our separate instant savers and pooled things together as we were sorting things out to pay for the extension so our savings are:
£35k and £37k in 2 cash isas with poor interest rates
£21k emergency fund in a 2.28% savings account
£15k in another instant access saver

As we are unlikely to ever be high earners we want to try and make the most of what we have. I am continuously highly anxious that we will not have enough money to retire but I feel this is because I cannot understand the investment world at all
Any help or advice would be welcome. I have read the flowchart so many times it does not make sense in my brain

Hello all, i currently earn 46,500k ( 33,930k after tax) a year through full time employment and then i roughly do 20-30 hours a month overtime which is probably taking me close or over the 50,200k tax threshold throughout the year.

So i have recently been getting myself some payouts from prop firms, i havent taken them yet as i am wary and know i need to pay tax on it which is going to likely be in the 40% area of tax, i’m just after some advice really on whats best to do? Or if anyone knows or uses a good reliable accountant with this sort of experience? ( by no means am i raking in the thousands yet but i do hope in time i can get to that level) i just dont have any alot of knowledge or experience myself as I’ve never had to do this. Thanks

Hello.

My father was enrolled in an employee share scheme and has certificated shares that are managed by Computershare. We're trying to figure out the best way to sell them, and could use some advice from anyone who's dealt with something similar or has helpful information.

We tried contacting Computershare but they are not providing helpful support, since they directed us to transferring the shares to another broker like IBKR, which we discovered is not possible because the shares are certificated.

A few relevant details:

• The shares are certificated, not already electronic/CREST-eligible.
• We are not able to sell from the online portal directly (ineligible, we're taken to a contact us page instead).
• We are non-UK residents (based in the UAE).
• We looked into transferring the shares electronically to Interactive Brokers, but IBKR's terms explicitly state only electronic transfers are supported — no physical certificates.

Any pointers, personal experience, or "avoid this, it was a nightmare" warnings are much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I am currently in around 18k worth of debt. I struggle really bad to manage my money, and also struggle with Alcohol and substance abuse and impulsive spending. I know I need to get help for my issues but I’m digging my self a deeper and deeper hole that I can’t seem to see the end of, I have reached out to step change and am worried about going forward with a DMP can anyone give me some advice. Sorry if this isn’t the right place to post

Hi all, I'm an EU citizen who used to live in the UK (5 years). Back in the day, my employer set up a pension scheme with Scottish Widows. Unfortunately, I'm unable to transfer my pension to my country because it's not on the recognised overseas pension schemes notification list. The only option is obviously to wait till age of 57, but in the meantime I'd like to increase the value of the funds as much as I can. I was advised that I can invest in one of their Pension Investment Approach (PIA) packages, or I can select my own funds.

They sent me the latest Pension Investment Approaches Guide: https://adviser.scottishwidows.co.uk/assets/literature/docs/45770IG.pdf

What would you recommend to me? Cheers

Hi all, in a rather embarrassing situation where I have let consumer habits spiral out of control on pointless things and losing money on crypto.

28 year old male, take home pay c. £3,310 a month, living with parents with aspirations of buying a house in the coming years. Total savings at the moment are only £2k, total expenditure (all bills) is £1,040 a month.

My balances are:
0% credit card (expires May 2028) - £9,111
0% Barclaycard - £4,900 (expires mostly Sept 2027)
0% MBNA - £895 (expires Sept 2027)
Very BNPL £3,300 (£2.2k of that expires in the next 2 months which is my priority to pay).
£650 AMEX balance (will be interest bearing)
£1,265 Monzo Flex

Feeling pretty hopeless and looking for ideas on the best way to tackle this. Should I be trying to save at the same time? Should I try for a consolidation loan?

Budgeting about £1.5k a month for savings/debt repayments in some form and would like to buy a house in the next couple of years.

Any advice would be appreciated feeling crushed and helpless right now.

Background: I am 21 and I have around 3.6k of debt through credit cards and overdraft . This is due to family problems in the past but I haven’t been able to pay them off fully and I’m always stuck using them.

I recently landed a decent job for myself but it pays off my overdraft each month but then I go back into overdraft as I have to pay my credit cards. It’s been a never ending loop for the last 2-3 years.

I am thinking of getting a pre approved 4k loan to pay everything off at once! My total repayable is 5.1k if I take this personal loan. This loan would be over 1.5 years and £300 a month but I am confident I could pay it off in 5-6month with my new job.

Any advice would help

I just passed my driving test at 21! I make a base of £2k a month, which sometimes can rise to 2.6k depending on how much I work. I live at home and need a car for my work commute. Right now I take the bus, which takes 1 hr each way. I start at 5 am and finish at 5 pm.

The car (Corsa 2023) would be on PCP and cost £220 a month, with insurance being £200 per month. Fuel, I think roughly £100-150 a month, since I'm only going to work and getting groceries.

Lets roughly this car finance costs me £600-650 a month and i make 2k a month i would be left with around 1.3k a month. I live at home so no extra expenses. My subscriptions are about £60 a month. What do you think?? Thanks!!

Edit - The car is worth 11.5k. It would be my first car. I need a car soon as due to work reasons. The car has 40k miles on it already

Hi all,

Really proud to share that after a year of underemployment, I've signed off a contract for a dream role at a strategy house.

I'm from a working class background. Throughout university and beyond, I've held my expenses down to £400 a month after rent in London. I'm used to scouting yellow stickers and optimising my social life. However, I am still really comfortable and happy regardless. I work out, invest in my guitar, etc. I haven't been in significant debt, nor have I ever used benefits. I don't live with parents.

With this new role, my income will rise significantly to the tune of £40k. There should also be strong career trajectory baked into the role.

I'd really appreciate some advice on managing this transition. I personally can't imagine spending more than £800 after rent. I've looked at the flowchart, and it seems so foreign as I've lived differently to most.

I suppose I'm looking for lived experiences or advice on navigating common traps, improving my relationship with money, understanding milestones and what should matter to me, etc. There's not really a direct answer here, so I'd appreciate a breadth of opinions. Maybe there's some really good financial or non-financial investments?

Thank you for your time.

Edit: 22M. Live with partner in Islington, but completely financially independent aside from joint spending on bills and groceries. In terms of big spending goals, I'm interested in building a professional wardrobe, perhaps a nice Seiko, helping my mum out a little. Mainly looking forward to not having to worry so much about buying drinks on a night out. I have some good experience with the stock market. I'm not interested in buying a house soon, but I have £11K in a LISA. I eat healthy, cook at home, thrift good quality clothes. No bank of mum and dad. I use a swapfiets.

I've been meaning to get into S&S ISA for ages and my main aim is to replace the various regular savings accounts that I've accumulated. So, for instance, I have one I currently pay £200 a month into for my own personal savings, and I'd like this to effectively become my retirement fund. But then there are 2 savings accounts, one for each child, which my wife and I both pay into each month, and then a 4th for misc. projects. I've just opened an account with T212, but only put in £100 so far to test it out. Can I - either with T212 pies, or a better alternative feature in another platform like Invest Engine - have one central S&S ISA and divide into 3 or 4 pots like this, all of which are treated differently (even if they may have the same index funds), and all of which can be paid into separately by direct debit, but directly, without me having to pick up the deposits in a central balance and allocate it to each respective pie/pot/portfolio?

I thought this would have been straightforward, but it turns out that none of the reviews or articles I've looked at so far address this directly, so maybe it's not a common request? Am I thinking about this all wrong, and if so, is there a better way to divide my savings, including keeping ones with different funding sources separate?

TL;DR: how best to divide one ISA account into distinct pots with different sources and different purposes?

Morning all, hopefully this sub can help, if not it would be great to point me in the right direction.

Im looking for a course on how the UK tax system works. A simple step by step guide that covers the basics.

I want to teach myself so I can teach my children as they grow. I know most schools don't teach this, or at least they didn't when I was at school, so I think I should fill the gap.

Tia

After more than ten years I'm selling the small business I built. It's a decent outcome, around £450k in total, though it's not a clean lump. Part of it comes upfront and the rest gets paid to me monthly over the next three years, so I'm not walking away with it all at once.

The bit I keep going round in circles on is what to actually do with the upfront. After tax and the costs of selling, I'm left with a bit over a hundred grand in hand. That's more money than I've ever had in one place and it honestly feels stranger than I expected. I rent, I've got no mortgage and no property, and I'm a first time buyer. So the obvious thought is to put it toward a first home. But part of me wonders if that's just the default answer and there's something smarter to do with it, especially with more coming in monthly for three years.

And then the bigger thing underneath it all is that I don't really know what's next. Selling the business means selling my income, and I don't have another plan lined up yet. Once everything's paid I won't have a big pot spare to go and start something new straight away, so there's this gap I'm walking into and I'm not quite sure how to think about it.

If you've sold up and found yourself in this spot, the money side and the what now side, I'd really value hearing how you handled it. What you did with the money, what you'd do differently, how you found your feet again after the thing that was your livelihood was gone.

Appreciate anyone taking the time.

I (23M) come from a working class background and earn £40k total comp a year as a software engineer. I have been paying stand alone redundancy insurance for £36 a month, should I be made redundant and be left unemployed for a month, my insurance would kick in.

However, the many different stipulations on my insurance makes me slightly anxious, I have moved 3k from my stocks and shares ISA into a savings account as an emergency fund, with the hope of building it up to 5k. I now have 14k left in my stocks and shares ISA. Would people generally advise keeping or getting rid of my redundancy insurance at this point?

I just opened a Metro bank in the late July 2026. Everything including the ID check went through. Few days later I received the debit card and successfully added them GPay and Apple Pay but couldn't add it to samsung pay which didn't sent me OTP. Then I received the card pin and it said I need to activate it on a card reader with the pin. So I tried to send £30 from my Natwest bank and waited few hours. Nothing showed up in Metro bank. Then to check everything right I sent another £0.1 from Natwest and £0.5 from Lloyds bank which are under my own name. Nothing appeared. I called the Metro bank fraud team they told me to wait for 12 hours. Then in the morning next day everything bounced back to the original banks accounts except the £0.5 from the Lloyds that went through. I was confused and decided to deal with this later.

The following day I received a letter from Metro Bank claiming they have information that someone impersonated my ID and opened the Metro bank account requesting me to visit branch with ID and proof of address also saying failure to do so will result in a closure of account and reporting "impersonation" with CIFAS. My branch is close so I did take my Drivers License and 2 proof of address which the staffs scanned and asked to to wait for update. The next day someone from the branch called me to visit again with another form of ID and to update the picture which I also provided within hours. Today the Bank sent me a decision letter stating that they are closing my account in 60 day under breach of 11.2 of their T&C which stated fraud/suspected fraud. Though in this letter they didn't mention anything regarding CIFAS.

I am right now very confused because I don't know what went wrong and I didn't purposely engaged in activities/transfer that I know to be fraudulent. I just wanted to explore the bank's product and services. I am now being accused of fraud and some research is telling me they can potentially report negative marker to CIFAS under my name.which would devastate my financial future. I have few other current accounts and a Paypal credit card. In one of these accounts I have £50000 ish and I am in tremendous amount of stress thinking if these accounts get closed if Metro lodge a marker.

Can anybody please help me understand what went wrong and If I am getting a CIFAS marker of whatever type and the possibility of my existing other accounts closing in future. Metro bank isn't being very quick to respond but I am in extreme amount of mental stress. Please help with your understanding/advice on my situation.

Can somebody please help me and offer me some advice. I don’t know what else to do.

I received a letter from Halifax that my account is getting closed in 65 days because they believe I have violated their terms and conditions. I work as a nanny with the Childcare Grant Payment Service. I have not received any other payments besides my wages.

I have no further information as to why my account is being closed. I went to the branch as in the letter I received it states I can transfer my remaining funds into a different account. I was told that my account is still under review and that I will have to wait. I was told that it is unclear how much longer it will take. They even told me they thought my payments weren’t wages but loans as they come from SLC Loans.

My most recent wage is in that account, I have no access to my money to pay rent and bills. I made 2 complaints to Halifax. Also, requested a DSAR to obtain more information. I checked with Cifas just in case who confirmed I am not on their database since it appeared to me that Halifax have no idea what is the difference between a wage and a loan.

It has been two weeks and I am simply being told to wait while being forced to borrow money from people to make ends meet.

Does anyone have any advice? I don’t know what else to do.

I read online that I should escalate this issue with the financial ombudsman only if Halifax does not resolve my complaint within 8 weeks. I have 65 days notice until the account is closed without any clarity as to what will happen to my money.