When Jim Butcher was a youngster, he did not have any idea about savings. His parents had not taught him about it and they themselves knew nothing about things like the stock market or investing.
“I think they bought me a premium bond of £10 when I was about five – then 30 years later, it was still worth the same price. If they had known about the stock market and things like that, they could have done more to teach me about financial things, such as investing.”
Jim, 51, who is married to Malin and has three children – Emma, 15, Tom, 13 and Lucy, 10, began investing in stocks and shares himself a few years ago and became interested in the topic. He and Malin, who is a nurse, decided they wanted to start saving for their children’s future and set up Junior stocks and shares ISAs for all three of them when they were aged eight, 10 and 13.
They opened the accounts about three years ago with an initial £1,000 and have added £500 a year since then. All three children now have around £4,000 in their Junior ISAs and the money has massively outperformed what they would have had in a cash savings account.
Jim, who lives in Farnham, Surrey and works in communications, said: “We belatedly started saving for our pensions and learned more about the stock market and tax free savings and decided we wanted to save for our children’s future alongside our own.