Free £1,000 a year for wannabe first time buyers | Will cash ISAs be cut | LISA v Pension

26:04could I contribute 20k into the SNS ISA and 4k into a LISA? No. Not that I'll ever get a chance to. By the way, Lee couldn't come on live as she is currently doing her driving test. Are you a first-time passer, Adrian? I was a second-time passer and I would advocate that because you can't enjoy it. The joy is so much greater when you know the misery of failure. Without failure, there is no joy, Martin. Well, that's the whole premise of the mastermind questions I give you, Adrian. I am also a second-time passer. I still remember the nightmare of my first test. I was driving a car that wasn't mine.

26:46It was the car you meant to drive the test in. I was very hot and sweaty because I was a panicking nearly 18-year-old at the time. And because I was so hot, the window started steaming up, especially the back window. but I didn't know the car and I was too scared to ask the driving instructor where the D-mister was so then I had to do the reverse round the corner which you did back then I don't know if they still do it and I reversed round the corner but I couldn't see through my back windscreen so I got it wrong and I failed and a lesson learned and he said to me at the end why didn't you ask me where the D-mister was and I said I didn't know I was allowed to talk to you because I was a very scared young man so Lee I'm going to answer your question and I hope very much you get satisfaction and pass your test, whether it's your first, your second or your third.

27:32What was the question again? I got distracted. Where's the D, Mr. Button? No, the question is, does contributing to a LISA impact your general ISA allowance? Yes, it does. Absolutely. You are allowed to put up to£20 ,000 in ISAs in combination in a tax year. A lifetime ISA is a form of ISA. It's an individual savings account. It's a tax free way to save where the interest can never be taxed. So yes, if you put£4 ,000 in a lifetime ISA, you would only be able to put up to£16 ,000 in other forms of ISAs in the same tax year. Hello, podcast producer Simon here. Since we recorded the pod, Lee has got back in touch with us to say she actually passed first time.

28:09We're delighted for you, Lee. Back to your ISA questions. Will wants to know if you have to have money in a lifetime ISA for a minimum time period before you use it for a house deposit, or could he put£4 ,000 in and get£1 ,000 of government contribution and then use it straight away? No, because it has to be open a year. But if you put a pound in now so that you have the facility, that counts as being open, even though you don't put any more money in. And then you can put money in after a year. You could dunk your£4 ,000 in the next tax year or in two tax years' time, even if you'd not saved another penny apart from the pound.

28:41Hence my£1 tip earlier. How do lifetime ISAs compare with help-to-buy ISAs? OK, that's the big one. Right, the help-to-buy ISA is the predecessor to the lifetime ISA. So the big difference between the lifetime ISA and the help to buy ISA is lifetime ISA also has the retirement element, help to buy ISA doesn't. Let me just run through a bit of a punch up between the lifetime ISA and the help to buy ISA. The reason this is important is while you can't get a help to buy ISA anymore, many people with help to buy ISAs, the idea is should you be doing it in a lifetime ISA rather than the help to buy ISA?

29:12You can have both, but you can only use one for a home purchase. So first of all, the biggest advantage of the lifetime ISA is you can put up to four grand a year in it. and therefore get a 25 % bonus on that. Effectively, in a Help to Buy ISA, it's a monthly maximum. You can only put up to£2 ,400 a year in it, so you can save less in it. To get money from a Help to Buy ISA to a Lifetime ISA, you can transfer it from your Help to Buy ISA, but it uses up your£4 ,000 a year you can put in a Lifetime ISA. So say you had£5 ,000 in a Help to Buy ISA, you could move£4 ,000 to this year's Lifetime ISA, but you couldn't add any contributions to it because you'd have used it up and you can move the extra grand next year and then you could add£3 ,000 on top.

29:49The maximum bonus in a lifetime ISA is technically 33 grand because you do maximum contributions every year from 18 to 49 and the bonus is paid every year up to age 50, where it's only£3 ,000 in a help to buy ISA. You can invest in a lifetime ISA, so you can do it as stocks and shares lifetime ISAs. You can only do cash savings help to buy ISAs. This is one of the big ones. The maximum property price on a lifetime ISA is£450 ,000. On a Help to Buy ISA it's only£250 ,000, although£450 ,000 in London. What can it be used for? The Help to Buy ISA is paid at completion, so it's only helpful for your mortgage deposit.

30:30The Lifetime ISA is paid at exchange, so it can be used towards the deposit for a house. So it is much better in that way. The biggest advantage of the Help to Buy ISA, though, over the Lifetime ISA, is there's no withdrawal penalty. So you have money in a Help to Buy ISA. If you don't buy a house, you can just take it out and you get your interest. You just don't get the bonus. That is my quick fight between Help to Buy ISAs and Lifetime ISAs. If that all sounds a little bit complicated, here's a quick summary. The advantage of the Help to Buy ISA is flexibility. You can save in it, keep your money in there, and if you decide not to buy a property, no problem.

31:04You can take it out and you get the interest. You just miss out on the bonus. Whereas the Lifetime ISA is far better if you're definitely buying a house because you can get a bigger bonus each year and you can buy a bigger house with it, up to£450 ,000. The problem with the lifetime ISA is if you want to withdraw the money for anything other than buying a qualifying house or till you're age 60, then you're going to pay a penalty. So it's far less flexible. Help to buy ISA flexible, lifetime ISA, bigger bonus if it works. I think at this point, I have loads more on lifetime ISAs. I know people have questions about whether you should use it for retirement and they want to know all the best buys.

31:39I'm going to do those later. But at this point, I think we should play that theme tune.

31:50There we are, Adrian. Are you all ready? It is time for Money Mastermind. Current score, Adrian has 10 right in this three-option multiple choice and 18 wrong, so he's still riding slightly better than random chance. Now, Adrian, as you may know, lost his Glastonbury virginity last week. Adrian, how was it before I go on any more? It was a learning curve. It was great. You know, something weird happened. You remember on the show a bloke last week, a bloke texted in and says, I'm going for the first time. Yeah, Rob, 49. I'm going for the first time now. I'm more nervous than excited. And you said, oh, you should meet up for a drink.

32:26And how we laughed, right? Friday evening, I was in a bar. Just the 220-odd thousand people all around me in that big field. And who should tap me on the shoulder? It's the most normal thing in the world. Oh, hi, Adrian. It's Rob here. I was on the radio with you yesterday. Ah. And how did you... So you and Rob were both, you know, losing your Glastonbury virginity at an aged state. Yes. How were you both enjoying it? We were enjoying it. Still a bit nervous, play-tied, bushy-tailed at that stage, but that was just the Friday night. By Saturday, we were like old pros. You could go to the bar and buy a pint without being too scared or anything like that.

33:09We were getting there for sure. Well, so as you'll realise, everybody, Adrian was incredibly excited by his Grastonbury trip. At one point, without any hint of exaggeration, at one point there was actually a trace of enthusiasm in his voice. I mean, that's how much. And if you know Adrian, you realise that's going somewhere. He was so into it, in fact, he decided to buy his wife, who wasn't there, a£325 limited edition Rick Astley-themed Bluetooth speaker made out of recycled tent canvases shaped like a Wellington boot programmed to play Never gonna give you up every time it rains. Engraved with even ankle deep in mud and halfway through a port-a-loo queue I thought of you.

33:55Romance isn't dead. I'm just writing that down feverishly because that sounds like a great present. Marvellous. Yes. Truth be told though he paid for this on his wife's credit card and he's only a second card holder. Sadly once home he discovered the speaker was faulty and played the song constantly. Do we have any of that song? Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you. When he got in touch with the firm, it had gone bust, having unsurprisingly only sold one model of the speaker. The question, Adrian, are you covered by the credit card under Section 75 Consumer Protection?

34:33So the point is, you bought it. It was over the£100 minimum for Section 75, so that isn't an issue. But you paid on your wife's credit card. Your three options. Yes. And my name is on that credit card. Yes, you were using the Adrian Childs card, but it is your wife's credit card. You are a second cardholder. So the answer is yes, all purchases are covered by Section 75. No, as you're a second cardholder. or yes, as even though you're a second cardholder, the purchase benefited your wife. Those are your three options. Does Section 75 apply to second cardholders? So yes, or always, in the same way as it would if you were first cardholder.

35:17No, not at all. Doesn't work for second cardholders. Or three, yes, because while a second cardholder, the purchase benefited your wife. OK, well look, if it's not A then section 75 is an ass because I can't think of a single logical reason why it shouldn't be A it's purchased on the credit card that's all that should matter and whether I'm the second person or second holder or whose benefit it is then section 75 should certainly apply and I'm always trying to answer these questions assuming the world is how I want it to be rather than how it probably is so I'm going for A So your answer under the Adrian Tinted World Spectacles is yes, all purchases should be covered.

36:00Why would you have less rights if you weren't a main cardholder? Now, before we get into the answer, just a quick upsum on what Section 75 rules actually are. And what they are is a powerful form of consumer voodoo. Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act says, if you buy something and pay for any of it on a credit card and the item costs between£100 and£30 ,000, then the credit card company is jointly liable with the retailer for the transaction. Now, that doesn't just mean if the company goes bust, you can go to the credit card company. It means you have identical rights with the credit card firm as you do with the retailer.

36:41So if an item is faulty, imagine you bought it abroad and you couldn't go back to the shop. you can go to the credit card company and expect the same rights as it to deal with the faulty item as you would have if you had taken it to a retailer. It's hugely powerful. It's part of the law. It staggeringly actually applies. Even if you spend any amount on the credit card, you're covered for the whole bit. So I always tell, I won't go into detail now, somebody bought a£16 ,000 kitchen, they paid a£100 deposit on the credit card. The kitchen company went bust. They were entitled, they went to the ombudsman to enforce it, they were entitled to all of the£16 ,000 back from the credit card company, not just the£100 put on a credit card.

37:19So you could even look at it and say, even if you don't want to buy something on a credit card, if it costs over£100 and it's an important transaction, spend a penny. Don't go to the loose. Spend a penny on the credit card and then the credit card protection covers it. There are some exemptions to the rules. It doesn't always work, but it's one of the most powerful forms of consumer protection you get. Anyway, back to the answer of the question. Well, the answer is quite simple. Section 75 is about a direct causal link between the purchase and the debt. And the argument is being a second cardholder breaks that causal link.

37:56So the answer is definitely not yes, all purchases are covered. Can I have an I'm afraid you have the answer wrong. But is it no, you don't get it at all? Or no, as even though you're a second cardholder, the purchase benefits your wife. So the most important thing for everybody to remember, I would first of all say, is if you're making an important purchase on a credit card and you want the Section 75 protection, you are far safer for the first cardholder to be making that purchase. However, and that's because they're the one who signed the credit agreement. God, that's mad. If, though, the second cardholder is making a purchase which would benefit the main cardholder, so, for example, you were buying a family holiday that you were both going on, then that would likely be covered under Section 75 rules.

38:49But who can judge that? I mean, I could have been buying myself some West Brom boxer shorts. You could argue it to my wife's benefit because she'll get to see me in them. That's a good question. I'm going to finish this and then I will answer that question. Who can judge it? Because it's actually very important. If you are buying something directly for the main cardholder, then the same applies. So in this case, the likely answer is yes, the purchase is covered under Section 75 because you were buying a gift specifically for your wife. Now you ask me the question, who judges it? So let me talk through what would look practically likely to happen if you made a Section 75 claim.

39:24If you made a Section 75 claim, almost certainly the card company would reject you out of hand because they would say you were the second cardholder. If you then spoke to me, which you have the ability to do, I would say, whoa, hold your horses there, Adrian. I don't know why I'd put that voice on, but it's what I would say. And I would say, I think that's wrong because you were buying a present for your wife and it's therefore in her primary benefit. Therefore, I would make a formal complaint to the firm. They have eight weeks to respond and I would take them to the Free Financial Ombudsman Service, which would likely adjudicate in your favour as long as you had decent proof that this was for her.

39:59and the fact that it was engraved with even ankle deep in mud and halfway through a port-a-loo queue I thought of you specifically actually proves your case that this was not a purchase for yourself it was a purchase for your wife because that's quite an obvious thing to buy your wife and therefore would actually give you some strong evidence that you had bought it for your wife but you can see all the ifs and buts involved which is why I'd say if you want that protection and you're using a second card then just get the first cardholder to buy it if you possibly can so who would judge it? ultimately the card firm and then the financial ombudsman.

40:30And I would think he would win, but it's not guaranteed and it's much more hassle using Section 75. It's a good reason to have your own credit card, isn't it? Not a joint one, but perhaps you could have a situation where, OK, there's one card and my wife can have my physical card and then I can have it on Apple Pay or whatever and just use it on my phone. Yeah, I mean, technically that's a breach. That's the problem. Technically you can't do that. Don't get me wrong. I mean, you wouldn't dream of doing... I mean, look, why would you both use this to have the same card? Well, one, because only one of you has a credit score that enables you to get the card.

41:05Second, because you might be playing to maximise cash back. You get cash back on a certain card. Well, no, no, it's for joint purchases. Yeah, but remember, there is no such thing as a joint credit card. This is important to understand. You can have a joint bank account. You can have joint savings. You can have a joint loan. You can't have a joint credit card. It is only a second cardholder. And on that point, you know, this is why that a joint credit card would not link your credit files because it isn't. Sorry, a second credit card would not link your credit files because it isn't joint. So it's really this is what people have to understand.

41:35Credit cards are never joint. Their second cardholder and this is the first cardholder's account. So if you played fast and loose with your wife's credit card, she spent the money, even though you were doing the spending. That's that's how it works legally. It's interesting, isn't it? Now, back with us after a couple of weeks hiatus is podcast producer Simon. And we've got loads more Lifetime ISA questions we want to get through, Simon. So what have you got for me? Welcome back. Yeah, absolutely. It's a delight to be back. I like it on record as well. We were off air earlier today because of Wimbledon, but I've worn a white shirt.

42:10Nice, for Wimbledon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's very cool. So when I'm doing at the cricket next week, which sadly we couldn't get you a passport because you were desperate to come along. I know. I was. The only reason I took this job was because Lily May says you get to go to the cricket all the time. Yeah, well, if this happened once in the history of the podcast, you probably exaggerated a little bit. And because you like working with me, surely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was an added bonus. But I am expecting when you're sitting in the studio in Manchester and I'm doing the pod from Lords next week, you to be wearing pads.

42:36Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll try and remember a helmet. Pads in a box, please. In case you've called me any Googlies. Right. So let's get on with lifetime icers. So we've got this one from Derek. Rick, my daughter is looking at lifetime ISAs at present. I'd like to clarify if the max£1 ,000 government input is additional to any interest the provider offers or is the government input the sole benefit? No, you get both. So the 25 % bonus you get on a lifetime ISA is a bonus paid on the amount you contribute. So interest is irrelevant. So if you put£1 ,000 in, you get a 25 % bonus,£250 on that. But your money in the account also earns interest paid for by the provider, assuming, of course, that you have gone for a savings lifetime ISA.

43:22The current top LISA savings payers are Moneybox at 4.76 % and Plum at 4.75%. Both let you put a pound in. Now, you may think, what if I just want to go to a high-strength bank to get my LISA? Well, it's going to be a struggle because very few of them offer lifetime ISAs because they're worried over being done for misselling over the retirement element of LISAs. So they've never really opened them. Another big flaw in the structure of the way that LISAs were done in the first place. Another thing that needs to be changed. Another thing that is in that Treasury report. But again, I don't hold out much hope of it being changed.

44:00So you're generally going with smaller fintech firms, but you still get the full up to£85 ,000 per person per financial institution, financial services compensation scheme protection. Worth noting that you can alternatively put money in a lifetime ISA in an investment, a stocks and shares lifetime ISA. So hopefully you will get more growth. I tend not to do that if you're saving as a first time buyer, because as a first time buyer, it's a short term form of savings. So you just want to keep it in savings and be secure with your money. But if you were to be doing it for retirement later in life and for once you're age 60, then because you've got a long time for the money to grow, you would want to be looking generally at putting it in some form of stocks and shares LISA, which will give you hopefully better investment returns over the long term.

44:42Of course, it's risk-based, so it's now guaranteed. But if you put in a nice spread of assets, the hope is over 20 or 30 years, the investment lifetime ISA or stocks and shares lifetime ISA will outperform a savings lifetime ISA. perfect emma asks i have one son who has a help to buy isa but from looking online he has only until 2030 to use it what happens if he doesn't use it by then does he just get the money back with no interest or does it transfer into another isa no he'd absolutely be able to keep the interest we don't yet and he could also move it into a lifetime isa or he could put it into any other form of cash isa what he wouldn't get after that point is the bonus because the bonus on the help to buy ISA is only paid at the point of completion.

45:26So if he hasn't completed a house, he wouldn't get the 25%. But the advantage of a help to buy ISA is there's no penalty to get your money out. So he can take his money out at any time or he could transfer it into another ISA or into a cash ISA or something like that. But you know what? I will deal with that in more detail once we get to 2030 and we can see if any specific provisions have been put in place. That's the help to buy ISA, just to be really clear, the lifetime ISA's predecessor, that's nothing to do. If you've lifetime ISA, that's not you. Joanne wants to know what is the maximum government bonus you can get?

45:55My children both have LISAs and have three bonus payments but no payment has been added for the last year. Well that sounds like an error. The maximum government bonus is£33 ,000. You can put up to£4 ,000 in a lifetime ISA per tax year. That means if you did that you'd get£1 ,000 free. You could open a LISA at aged 18 and the bonus is paid until aged 50. So you could have 33 years worth of bonus times£1 ,000 is£33 ,000. The fact your bonus hasn't been paid this year sounds like it's a problem or a scheduling issue from the bank accumulating it. It is certainly not a you've hit your maximum. So as long as you're talking about the lifetime ISA, not the help to buy ISA, you should continue to get the bonus.

46:36Speak to your financial services provider, whoever you got the money with. Ma is asking, after using the Lysa balance to purchase a first home, the account remains open, presumably to be used as a retirement saver that can be accessed at the age of 60? Do additional deposits benefit from the 25 % top up each year? Until you are aged 50, any money you contribute to a lifetime ISA gets the bonus added to it. So yes is the answer. If you were to buy a house at 35 and you were to continue to put money in it towards your retirement, you would get the 25 % bonus on top. So it's worth me going into now a question I get asked a lot.

47:14Is a LISA worth using for retirement savings? Well, I should be technical having just asked that question to them, but my own question. Technically, it isn't linked to retirement. You can use the money in a lifetime ISA and get the bonus without penalty once you're age 60. So it's not state pension age. The problem with this is no one has yet got to that point. No one who has a LISA has got to age 60 because it started in 2017. And the oldest you can now be, if you got one, you'd be 39 then, would be 48 now. So we haven't got there. The general rule, though, is if you're an employee, a pension smacks the pants off a LISA for retirement savings.

47:52Because when you put money in a pension, first of all, it comes from pre-tax salary, but also your employer, if you're going through the auto-enrolment system, has to match contributions. The minimum is 8 % contribution, of which five percentage points of that, so five of the eight, you would contribute as a minimum, and 3 % your employer would match on top. So it's giving you money towards your pension if you do it through that system. That smacks the pants off a lifetime ISA in general. If you're self-employed, as a higher or top rate taxpayer, the tax benefit in a pension would easily outweigh, in most cases, a lifetime ISA.

48:29So just in simple terms, if you're a higher rate taxpayer and you put£100 towards your pension, because it's coming from pre-tax salary, you only lose£60 in your pay packet. so you get a£100 investment for a loss of£60 in your pay packet. Where LISAs start to come into their own for retirement is, of course, for anyone who's used up their pension or doesn't have access to one for some reason, or if you're a basic rate taxpayer. If you're a basic rate taxpayer, LISAs can be an option. Now, one important point to note that's in the Treasury Committee report that they raised is money you put into a lifetime ISA can impact your eligibility to universal credit if you're on benefits, because if you have savings that can reduce your benefits and lifetime ISAs count as savings, and they're suggesting it shouldn't because pension savings don't count as savings.

49:17So money in your pension doesn't reduce your universal credit eligibility. Money in your lifetime ISA does reduce your universal credit eligibility. Now, I should say at this point, I've always said it's, you know, it's roughly akin pension versus lifetime ISA savings pros and cons. I had a bit of a ruck when I was giving evidence to the Treasury Committee with a man called Michael Johnson, who was on the panel next to me. He was one of the people who had invented the lifetime ISA. And actually, I think he had an interesting viewpoint on his calculations over the lifetime ISA. So I'm going to read to you what he said.

49:48He said, I disagree fundamentally with something that Mr Lewis has said, because it's factually wrong. The majority of the people in this country are basic rate taxpayers while working and will become basic rate taxpayers in retirement. If one has a choice between a lifetime ISA and a pension product with identical investment in the two, the lifetime ISA will produce unambiguously a 17.6 % better return. Full stop. So he's talking identical investments. Of course, investment choice matters. This is because of the differences in the tax treatment. Up front, the tax relief and the bonus are economically equivalent.

50:19And this is the first point about a communication challenge. A 25 % bonus on a lifetime ISA is the same as 20 % tax relief. At the rear end, when one is drawing down and withdrawing funds, the lifetime ISA is entirely free of tax. Of the pension pox, 25 % is tax-free. The other 75 % will be taxed at 20%. For the vast majority of people who are basic rate taxpayers, that results in a 17.6 % better return for holding a lifetime ISA. Now, I think that's interesting and good information. I won't go into the fact that I'd actually been talking about in general pension savings through an employer, and the vast majority of people do have their pensions through an employer, will easily beat off lifetime ISAs and the higher rate taxpayer.

50:58And of course, there's a big caveat at in here that what he's saying is if you're a basic rate taxpayer and you remain a basic rate taxpayer once you get into your retirement, then the lifetime ISA is materially better. Good fact. I'll put it across. I'm not quite sure as you're putting exactly what I said, but that's not the point of this podcast. I wanted to give you that information. So is it worth saving for your retirement in? According to Mr Johnson, for many people who are basic rate taxpayers, and if you're going to be a basic rate taxpayer once you get your income, like your pension income, once you are in retirement, it can easily beat a pension.

51:30That was his evidence anyway. I'll let you check that out for yourself. What's next, Simon? Well, Julie actually has a question that's kind of related to this. She asks, why is there an age restriction and why are they called lifetime ices if I can't open one at any stage of my life? She's now 56. Because those are the rules. It is age discrimination. It's legal age discrimination because it's done by a statute. It was set up in the rules there because that's when George Osborne, who set up the lifetime ISA as he's dipping his toe in the water hoping people would use it because it would save the state money on pensions and actually in an accounting ruse it would make it look cheaper to save the state money than otherwise.

52:05That's the rules he put in place when he set it up. You'd have to ask George Osborne. I can only explain how they work now. George, you are always welcome on the pod. Always. Tom wants to know, he has a LISA and thanks you for advocating for them. Having used last year's limit, he'd assumed he'd be locked into that provider. My question is, do the rules about transferring an ISA across and still using this year's allowance still apply to LISAs? Absolutely. You can absolutely transfer your LISA to another LISA provider. The way you do it is you apply to open a new LISA and you fill in the transfer form and they will move it across.

52:40You are not locked into one LISA provider. Just if we're being interested, you can have LISAs with more than one provider. You just can't contribute to more than one provider in a tax year. So you could open a new LISA with a new provider of safer investments as well as having a LISO, a cash LISO for savings. You can only contribute to one in the tax year. You can only open one in the tax year. But if you had a cash LISO, you can open an investment LISO this year. It will make it technically more difficult when you come to using it at the end, having two though. But in general, yes, you are free to transfer them.

53:09Don't feel locked in. If you can get a better interest rate elsewhere, absolutely ditch and transfer your LISO. Crofty, should I still be adding to my LISO if I'm hoping to buy in London one day? If it looks like you're going to buy over£450 ,000, you probably should not be adding to your LISA unless you want to use it for retirement. Because I don't see the rules being changed at the moment. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see them being changed at the moment. Lauren wants to know, with Rachel Reeves making changes to the cash ISA allowance, are there any changes being made that will affect the LISA allowance?

53:42I don't see that coming at the Mansion House speech on the 15th of July. But absolutely, there was this Treasury Committee report that the government will have to respond to. So the Treasury Committee is a cross-party group of MPs, but it's led by a Labour MP and there are Labour MPs on the panel. Within that, they criticise quite a few things. The big one being lice's value for money and whether lices are well targeted enough. As well as the sort of, you know, the withdrawal penalty I discussed earlier and universal credit issues. Now, that's interesting, isn't it? Lysa's value for money and are they well targeted enough?

54:16In other words, the state is funding first time buyers. Is it funding the right first time buyers? Is it funding too much in there? and once you start to open that door I mean it does raise questions as to the future of the lifetime ISA as a product I wouldn't be too worried if I already had a lifetime ISA and we're putting money in there we don't know what will happen to it in future but I think they tend not to suddenly change the way it operates retrospectively but they may well look at changing the rules for money being put in in future I don't think it's a very strongly likelihood of it being ripped apart.

54:50But I think there is still a potential in the back of this Treasury report to maybe change some of the qualifying criteria for new people setting it up or change the generosity of the free money that's going in. So things are up for grab. Nothing is set for certain. We have a new government would be my general answer to that. And you might want to go and look at that Treasury report. Ian wants to know, is it worth opening a LISA before I turn 40 in September, even with a small amount, even though I'm not in a position to seriously save anything yet. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You should be opening a Lysa at least the day before your 40th birthday and putting a pound in it.

55:26That gives you the facility to use a Lysa later if you want it. You just put a pound in it. You might never want to use it, but you never know. The bonus is still paid up until age 50. Something may happen that you want that facility. Why would you close yourself out of the facility of having a lifetime ISA when all you have to do is put a pound in there, earn interest on your pound to do so, and therefore you can use it whenever you want in future. So definitely, if you are in your late 30s now, you've never bought a house, or even if you have, because you might want it for retirement savings, go and dosh yourself a pound into a lifetime ISA.

55:57And Kazza, why does inheriting a property count as being a first-time buyer for a LISA? Does inheriting only part of a property also count? What if the property goes into a trust for a disabled sibling? Why does it count? Because the rules say so. Sorry, I don't have a better answer than that. Those are the lifetime ISA rules. Does inheriting part of a property count? Yes, I'm afraid it does. The rules on a trust will depend exactly on the ownership of that trust and how that trust has been set up. My suspicion is the answer is yes, but you would need to talk to your trust provider about that.

56:30I can't answer that question without more specifics, I'm afraid. Probably even with more specifics, I would have to go and ask someone who deals with trust for advice on it. It's not my area, the trust side. Apologies. That is all our last question. Well, well done. Whether it's Lisa or Lisa, we got there in the end.

56:49And that is it for this week. If you've enjoyed it, please tell your friends you've been listening to the Martin Lewis podcast. Do also suggest any 18 to 39s or their parents it's relevant for. Listen to this specific Lifetime Isis podcast. There is big money in it. We tend to put out a new episode of the pod every Thursday, so do subscribe to keep up to date and then your pockets will be pleased with you. And if you've not enjoyed it and you're still nistling to this point, then it's your own fault. So...

57:36Martin Lewis is the founder of moneysavingexpert.com. But of course, other consumer and price comparison websites are available. You can get in touch with Martin's podcast production team by emailing martinlewispodcast at bbc.co.uk. The offers and rates mentioned in the podcast are correct at the time of recording. However, if you are listening on demand, it's worth double checking as details can date. Remember to subscribe on BBC Sounds and leave us a review however you listen.

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