Can You Still Buy A House In 2026? Lifetime ISA Changes, New ISA Rules & First-Time Buyer Tips - Brian Byrnes (Moneybox)

0:00Brian, welcome back.

0:01Brian Byrnes: Thanks for having me. This is round four, I think. Yeah, always delightful to be here. Wow, thank you very much, sir. I'm not going to hang around today because I think this topic is one close to my heart. We're just talking off camera. I've got family members looking to be first-time buyers or moving house. I've just moved house myself. I know how difficult it is. But your research model is basically a disciplined saver against real house price data. Now, be straight with me. You're seeing the data, you're on the ground, you know exactly what's going on. Is it actually possible for someone to buy a house anymore or is the finishing line getting a little bit away from them, do you think?

0:39Look, it's a little bit of both. The finishing line is definitely moving as that data shows. But going back to the first part of your question, I think it's really important to tell people that, yes, it is still absolutely possible to get onto the property ladder today, despite what all of the headlines will tell us. i'm not saying that it's easy but if you look at moneybox data and we have the largest community of aspiring first-time buyers in the uk there's well over a million people saving with us into a lifetime iso to try and get onto the property ladder one person every 10 minutes successfully did that in 2025 so that's one first-time buyer every 10 minutes getting the keys to their first home and sometimes the human story behind those numbers can get kind of lost behind uh left behind but we can talk about that in a second.

1:22But it is absolutely still possible. But yes, the goalposts are shifting. And that research that we showed you said that even somebody starting off with a kind of five-year plan to get a deposit together, they can be super disciplined, they can pay into their lifetime, I said, they can get the bonus. By the time they get to the point where they thought they were at the finish line, what the finish line would have been at the start of their plan, the goalposts have already shifted because of house price inflation and cost of living right and shifted to the tune of about nine months and three and a half thousand pounds so they have to save again uh and keep going and actually from a behavioral perspective what we have seen when it comes to people saving for a deposit there's kind of two points that are the most difficult from a psychological perspective the first one is when you first get started because you're like how how am i going to do this how am i going to save up 12 13 grand which is the average deposit that we see on our platform you're just like this feels like absolutely miles away um when you're kind of in the habit of it in the middle it's not too bad from a behavioral perspective because you just kind of get into the habit of monthly and the government bonus that the lifetime isa pays you again that reinforces really good habits and then the second part that's really difficult from a behavioral perspective when you're just close enough the last kind of 12 months where you've been kind of diligently saving away and as the goalposts start to start to shift psychologically and behaviorally that part can be quite difficult and yeah as the research shows that can take an extra nine months beyond what you thought it was going to take you.

2:49And when you say psychologically,

2:52Brian Byrnes: how do you mean, is it that it's really difficult to just keep going or do you see them stop saving as much or do they stop completely? What's happening there? It's more of a kind of anecdotal thing when we speak to our customers, if they've been saving, people can save like on average, really for our platform, it's about four and a half years that people will save into their lifetime, I say, to get onto the property ladder. But that can also mean it can be kind of seven to 10 years for people as well. And that can be quite a long time. And anecdotally, when we speak to them, when they feel like they're pretty close, it can just feel like a little bit of a slog to finally get over the line, press the button and get those keys.

3:32But as I say, 2025 alone, one person did that every 10 minutes. And that's what we need to emphasize, because if you look at the headlines, it says that, of course, we're still in a cost of living crisis. That's not going to go away. Prices aren't going to come back down. interest rates are higher than they were five years ago and house prices even though they aren't going up quite as much as as they were they're still not coming kind of back down so it is some of the hardest buying conditions that we've seen in in decades so those headlines are out there but what we need to do is keep telling people that it is possible and keep giving people the motivation and the tools uh because there's so many benefits to people of getting on to the property ladder beyond just kind of housing security um and that those benefits stick with them for life as well.

4:15Brian Byrnes: So let's walk it like, let's unpack that a touch, because I think we sort of breezed over it from like a housing and inflation standpoint as well. And like, walk us through what's actually happening with that nine month delay in that three and a half grand kind of shortfall. What's actually going on behind the scenes to sort of kick that into play? So basically what's happening in the background there is just house price inflation. Like we can see it day in and day out. And as I mentioned, houses aren't going up as much as they once were. But from the time that somebody started out on average, four and a half years ago, compared to when they're ready to press the button, they are facing a three and a half grand shortfall, which they need to keep saving for an additional nine months in order to make up.

4:51So as I say, it's just the price of houses going up as it's done in the UK for decades and decades.

4:56Brian Byrnes: Gotcha. So if you are then starting soon now, or you're perhaps within that category, would it be sensible to then factor that in now so you're not getting to the end and then having that kind of psychological barrier of that nine months-ish on average that you've got to push through? Yeah, I think so. As much as you kind of reasonably can do. And we always say to people when they're building their financial plan to get a deposit together, try and build as much kind of flexibility in there as you possibly can do. For some people, they may end up getting a little bit of a bargain from a property perspective and buying somewhere a little bit less than they thought.

5:31But our data shows, on average, the goalposts do shift out a bit. So be prepared psychologically to save a little bit longer. And crucially, don't get disheartened because we have millions of people out there now doing all of the right things when it comes to saving, investing and getting onto the property ladder. So it's really, really important that we tell people that this dream is still possible and you can still independently, independent of bank and mum and dad, get onto the property ladder and get those keys to your first home.

6:01Brian Byrnes: Yeah, no, it's such a good point. I think you like, you articulate it really well because, you know, we were talking about this, my sister sort of potentially, you know, I could probably say it publicly now, she might come for me in the comments if she hasn't told her friends, but she's moving back from Australia and it's like, she's going through this whole thing now of like, lifetime ISO, how do I open it? What do I do? How long do I have to have it open for all of this jazz? and it's quite scary for people just even just looking up at those numbers and another side of that factor is just like well we found this house and yeah um i need a 25 grand deposit i'm like you don't need 25 grand you need a lot more than that yeah and and i think a lot of people especially young people when they go and to look at that and they just think well you know that's all i need but actually there's quite a lot of other costs associated with with buying a house yeah how do you factor those into people's plans and do you help people understand that too yeah so for a long time we've been putting financial education in the app of like this is how you save for a house and it's not just the housing deposit which the lifetime ice is incredibly good for you also need a fund alongside that for all things like solicitors fees conveyancing all of the really boring stuff and then ideally if you possibly can you're saving for things like the more fun things like the housing renovations, putting your own stamp on the place when you get in.

7:23So we've been doing that from a financial education perspective for a while. We now have the Aurora engine that we have in the app, which gives people a guidance financial plan. And again, if somebody says that I'm looking to save for a house, the plan that we give them most likely will include a lifetime ISA for the deposit, but will also include an account beside that to save for all of those incidentals as well. Because you don't just want to have the deposit money, because as we know um getting onto the property ladder can be expensive outside of the deposit as

7:51Brian Byrnes: well telling me man when i moved recently and obviously it wasn't first time buyer anymore um we had that pot set aside for legals for conversing um for surveys and all of it and then also like we had like a new house fund pot which was like well guess what our three-seater sofa that we've got in that house doesn't fit in that house and we've got oh we've got switch all our furniture around we've got to buy white goods because ours were built in and like there's so many other things and you've got to factor all of that in but by making that plan ahead of time just allowed us to like move in okay we know everything's paid for we've already picked everything out it's arriving x y and z and it took the stress off massively yeah but when we first moved into our first place like we were like what's this 500 pounds cost that we've got now like where's that come from why are we paying this and it is extremely stressful so even just it doesn't take long but just spending a little bit of time getting up to speed on and like some of the costs that are associated with moving can be really helpful we moved into our place five or six years ago and we were lucky enough and we kind of saved for a while and we had 15 grand alongside the deposit right in order to do what we thought would be the fun stuff when we moved into the house and we had all of these dreams oh we're gonna do this as you say the sofas all that sort of stuff and it just goes as soon as you scratch beneath the surface of a house you're like okay well that's going to cost 500 quid that's going to cost a gram whatever that is and it goes kind of pretty quickly so yeah um obviously dream scenarios you've got a fund um alongside the deposit fund to do all of that stuff but we're talking about this like i wouldn't say negatively in terms of like the cost of buying but like you see the benefits as well and again we see it from a customer perspective uh day in and day out where people come to us on the average of age of about 26 for a lifetime isa to start saving 26 yeah and then they save for kind of let's say on average kind of four and a half years right because so that's actually lower than the average yeah first time buyer across the nation yeah absolutely yeah yeah um and again the lifetime isa has brought down the average age of the first time buyer which is a brilliant thing yeah because getting onto the property ladder earlier helps you build up that housing security, financial security, you can quite quickly turn to other financial goals after that.

10:12And that's what we see our customers doing because we and the government have built a product that incentivizes the right behaviors on a monthly basis. So they're in that habit and we have helped them hit that first major financial goal early in life. So quite quickly, they just turn around and go, right, what's next? What do I have to build up next? And usually that's rebuilding your emergency fund because you're absolutely broke after purchasing a property or it could be right i need to start investing or i need to sort my pensions out so helping people believe that it's a achievable goal to get onto the property ladder and get the keys to their first home is the key to financial security for for the rest of their life and we have to keep helping people to do that you make

10:53Brian Byrnes: a good point there because one of the stats that you sent me is that people are saving more than ever so it's 475 pounds a month which is up from 344 which is quite a significant jump and people still feel like they're falling behind yeah why do you think that is i think a lot of it is a down to the reality of the cost of living crisis and also down to the perception of everything is just getting more expensive so yes inflation has come down and on a headline basis it's what somewhere between two and three percent and not up at 10 or 11 which it was a couple of years ago but if you look on a five-year basis prices are still up 30 compared to what we are mentally anchored to so even if you're saving 470 quid a month compared to 350 um it still feels like the price of everything is outpacing how much you can save so it's kind of that running battle to try and keep up with the price of just day-to-day living but also house price uh inflation as well yeah and i think like stress testing these things about you know moving into your house or when you are saving for these things like okay these things are more expensive can just make you feel like a little bit less like you're behind and when you we do these videos all the time they always do well every single time they do well they said they um you say oh like you know the numbers is two and five have less than a thousand which is fca data now yeah which has actually gone up it was one in four so it's that's like and then when you say these things you kind of take a perspective back you're saving 470 pounds a month huge you've done you're ahead of two you know what's what's that number 40 percent of mental maths immediately in two months you know so i think you you have to sort of take yourself for the sort of these things with a pinch of salt yeah and it could feel like you're falling behind but i think that's very varied data depending on your expenses and your life and your responsibilities yeah and the other point i'll make just from a demographic perspective right is that 80 of our aspiring first-time buyers earn less than 40 000 pounds so they are still getting onto the property ladder as i say on average four and a half years and one person every 10 minutes so these are not people on absolutely ridiculous salaries as i say 40 000 is still over the UK average, but 80 % of people trying to get onto the property ladder with us are less than£40 ,000 again, and they're using the lifetime ISA where you can get£1 ,000 free from the government every year.

13:20So again, we just have to bring it back and say, even if you're on, it's still a decent salary, but not a ridiculous salary, it's still possible to do that based on your salary and not just based on bank of mum and dad, which again, the papers and media would have you believe that that's all that happens now is it's inheritance money. which obviously does happen, but it's not the reality of what we see day to day with our customers.

13:42Brian Byrnes: Which is good. It's exactly kind of a positive outlook that we should see from this because the news is very negative. 97 % of those stories, I looked them up, were negative around first-time buyers, which is just scary, especially if you're just seeing this every day. You're 25 years old, you're trying to do the right thing, and you're just seeing this. You sort of give up and get a point, but actually the data shows it's positive movement towards getting on the ladder. and you're getting on there a lot less than the 34 now is the average first time buyer but then 31 with a lifetime isle with you with you with your data that's what i find myself spending most of my time doing and not just when it comes to uh getting onto the property ladder right it's with investing as well it's like don't believe the headlines if you believe the headlines over the last kind of three three and a half years you would think the world is ending stock markets are falling off a cliff all of that sort of stuff and you and i both know that markets are at an all-time high.

14:36And if you've been investing for the last three and a half years, you would have made substantial cut of profits just in a diversified portfolio. It's the same with retirement. Everything that we hear from a retirement perspective is that everybody's screwed. Nobody's going to be able to retire. It's going to be 75 or 80, whatever it might be. Pensions Commission came out a couple of months ago. And yes, there was stuff in there that said people, we probably do need to be saving a little bit more. People who are self-employed, that's a massive gap that we need to fill from a policy perspective.

15:04But the main thing that I read from that was that auto-enrollment has been a massive success. And we've got, I think it's 11 million people more saving into pensions over the last 20 years because of auto-enrollment. So I spend a lot of my time at Moneybox customers saying, don't believe everything that you hear out there. It is still possible to hit your financial goals. And there are products and policies out there, lifetime ISA, stocks and shares ISA, pension that gives you tax relief that will help you get there. So that's what I spend a lot of my time doing.

15:33Brian Byrnes: Yeah, so 63 % have changed their expectations or location in the last six months. So what are people actually giving up when they're doing that, do you think?

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17:04I don't know if people are actually giving up that much. And I speak of that for personal experience. And I think for you as well, right? So when we, my partner and I were looking to buy five or six years ago, we were based in London at the time. um and we had a look around london and for the budget that we had you weren't able to swing a cat basically i think every single house that we turned up to look at basically there was a tube running through the back garden and an estate agent telling us oh you'll get used to it you'll get used to it yeah i'm entirely sure i want to get used to it and here is the victoria line yeah exactly it basically was that um and it was like we have a couple of animals and was like not really sure that's going to work for us but um we broadened out our search right and then we started looking down and now we moved down to Brighton kind of six years ago.

17:51So I think in those stats, it would look like, okay, we broadened out our search and we look somewhere beyond where we were initially looking. But that certainly from our perspective is not a negative. And we see that again, time and time again, from a customer perspective where, yeah, their plans change and maybe their budget doesn't stretch quite as much as they originally thought. But I don't necessarily always see that as as a negative it can definitely be a positive and the positive getting the keys onto the property ladder getting a mortgage starting paying that down and building up housing security regardless of whether it was in the original location that you looked at i think that far outweighs any negatives of that equation completely man i'm really glad you said that

18:32Brian Byrnes: because we were waldemstow before then we moved out to hampshire and you know again that was but So door to door into office for me was a roughly just under 50 minutes. Door to door from fleet to the office was just under an hour. So 10 minutes difference. And obviously could afford a house in fleet. We now live in Ramsgate. That journey's a touch longer. But we've got the trade-off is we've got a nicer house. I can walk to the beach in a nice community. I'm near my family. and you know i would have a one-bedroom box flat in walthamstow at the same price yeah so there is trade-offs and there's expectation changes and negatives potentially on paper but the trade-offs are they're always always a positive in another area i.e more space usually within that and that's generally a positive yeah exactly more space and usually you just get more for your money if you expand your search a bit so i look at those stats and i don't necessarily always see them as as a negative in terms of people expanding their their search areas yeah i think it's the right you know i also think i like doing this with people where i'm like i did a video about it and i actually did way better than i expected it to it was like write down the five things that you actually want from the location yeah and generally um most of the time it usually isn't where you've put the pin in the map it usually is somewhere a little bit different but you've just got attached because your mate took you for dinner down a road somewhere down there and you're obsessed with that one mode and actually isn't necessarily where you want to live and that's why we picked by the sea in the end because we were looking way more inland in Kent yeah and we eventually ended up by the sea because we both put the sea on our paper we both put walking and hikes and being their family on there and it meant a lot to us and it ended up being that that was the right location it just so happens it was 10 times cheaper than we were looking before so i think it's a really nice exercise to do because you can end up changing where you want to be we actually did the exact same thing um i had a spreadsheet i have a spreadsheet for everything as you imagine this one was super basic and as i say it was like the five things that we were that was most important to us and the four locations that we were thinking and basically just ranked each of those boxes out of five and i don't think we were starting off by saying oh brighton is by far and away um the place that we're going to look but when we did that exercise it very clearly came out on top and as i say we moved there six years ago and haven't looked back yeah brighton's not cheap though it's cheaper than london um it's annoying people like us uh moving down from london driving up the prices you can see the locals just absolutely furious with us but it is such a lovely lovely place to live obviously you've got the sea which you've got down there as well but we've got the south downs as well on our doorstep so we're just up there with the dogs uh every day um and yeah it's an absolutely lovely place to live and you had a holiday recently where i was like looking after dogs right like how i was so jealous man i was like yeah we've uh we've picked up both of our dogs from a charity in bulgaria called street hearts um which actually um the winning goal score of the world cup ferran torres also got a dog from there so they've had a bit of publicity uh recently um and my wife has become uh trustee of the charity as well so we actually spend quite a bit of time over in bulgaria looking after puppies and uh and dogs so yeah i see your instagram stories every now and then i'm like that looks like the best day it's amazing it's amazing because they don't get a lot of men volunteering right um so whenever i go over with my wife my job is just to socialize the dogs and it's usually just to socialize puppies so i basically just sit in a pen or a house with eight or ten puppies just to get some used to men and it's yeah it's like it's the best break from personal finance policy that you could imagine just hanging out with puppies for a week highly recommended yeah yeah well like on that that fact like obviously um when you're renting um pets are quite difficult to have in a lot of places landlords don't necessarily let you have pets although that has changed that has changed a bit though recently yeah that has a bit more flexibility which is good a little bit more flexibility yeah but when you're renting you the kind of consensus out there is that you're covering someone else's mortgage while you you know can't save for your own um how much do you sort of agree with that sentiment and that kind of phrasing that you're paying somebody else's mortgage I can see where people are coming from, but it's a very British mentality, right?

23:15If you look over at our European neighbours, renting and renting for life is a much more common setup over there. So I think it depends on what stage of life that you're at. So I spent 10 years in London happily renting when I moved over here at 23. So I spent 10 years just enjoying myself. And yes, I was contributing to somebody else's mortgage, but I was also living my life and enjoying myself. And then I got to a point where I was like, okay, I need to start more diligently saving and then building my kind of deposit together to get onto the kind of property ladder. So I don't completely subscribe to the idea that you're throwing away money because everybody needs somewhere to live.

23:59And I think it depends on the stage of life that you're at and your capacity to save up a deposit. But anyone out there that is renting and kind of kicking themselves for not being able to put a deposit together, I have said we need to be realistic and optimistic, but it is difficult out there. So I don't think anybody should be kind of kicking themselves if right now, given a cost of living crisis, that they are only, in a verticommas, able to rent and not get a deposit together. Hopefully things will get a little bit easier in the years to come. Cost of living will come down a little bit. But it's definitely not something I'd be kicking myself about because, as I say, people, France, Spain, Germany, quite happily rent.

24:36Brian Byrnes: Yeah, it's the thing there, isn't it? Yeah. And it's not such a big deal, which I think we're obviously, as we all have always have been, have been obsessed with getting on the property ladder. and I think that's just even been amplified recently. Yeah, there's a huge obsession with bricks and mortar in the UK and it's the same as in Ireland as well. And you can understand it. Again, research that I've seen recently says that if you own your own home in retirement, your pension lasts 13 years longer than if you don't. So one of the things that is missed when we talk about lifetime ISA or first-time buyer ISA, all of this sort of stuff, is those sort of long-term benefits that go beyond actually getting the keys to the first home.

25:19We did a round table for first-time buyers a couple of years ago and got people in and just said, look, what's your experience, all that sort of stuff. And one of the things that kind of surprised me was that people talked about the impact on starting a family, for example, about how the fact that their family plans had changed because it was taking them longer to get onto the property ladder and they wanted to be able to have the keys to their first home before they started having kids. So there's massive societal benefits of helping people into houses as early as we possibly can do in life.

25:50Brian Byrnes: Have you seen those graphs of the average age of first child and average age of first-time butter? No. How closely linked they are, which is really interesting. You can imagine, yeah. Obviously, there's other contributing factors to that, of course, like wider education, parity in the working place, which you know still has a long way to go yeah um has improved greatly but it's really interesting they almost track um so yeah i find that very interesting and again just quickly anecdotally on that round table what first time bars were saying to us was um i'm no longer looking for kind of a one bed or a studio flat as i thought i would be at 28 29 or 30 they're kind of skipping that phase and looking to buy somewhere where they can have a family at 32 or 33 yeah so again anecdotally and i think we see that a little bit in the data as well that those are some some trends from a first time bar perspective we've done just that yeah we we've bought the house yeah we did the same knowing that potentially you know if we do have kids um we're going to need the space and we don't want to move again so we're just we've gone uh we've missed the step basically we have spot we're okay with it you know it does mean that we've got two bedrooms probably sitting there 95 of the time but it is what it is yeah um and we don't need to move if we if we do end up having a family or can grow and we can always extend the property as well it's got a bit of garden space so that allows us to have those options in play if we ever did want that um now the big one you literally gave parliamentary evidence on this yeah it's pretty cool i think last time we chatted you'd just been in um the government's potentially scrapping the lifetime isa um in its current form i should say and that's caused quite a lot of confusion with um people that have one people that want to open one people that are thinking about buying what can i actually use if someone's got one right now should they be worried should they not what's the four-on-one at the moment.

27:55Brian Byrnes: A little break in the episode here. Have you guys been meaning to write or update your will, but just keep putting it off? You might have done everything right to protect your financial future while you're here. Your savings are building, your ISAs are ticking over, maybe you own a home and you've been contributing towards your pension. But what about after you're gone? And that is where a will comes in to make sure the people you love are protected when you are not here, financially and emotionally too, saving them time and stress when they're going to need it most. Without a law, the laws of intestancy decide what happens, and that does work for some people, but for others, they want to say in something this important.

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29:05Brian Byrnes: To claim your free will today, head to will.octopuslegacy.com forward slash money gains, or you can follow the link in the show notes below. And if you are watching on video, you can also scan the QR on screen. Offer ends soon, so sign up now before appointments get booked up. And now back to the episode.

29:26Where to start on it? So I think the important thing to say is for anybody that already has a lifetime ISA and for anyone really that opens it up over the course of the next couple of years, nothing is changing. So the government has said that anybody that has a lifetime ISA will be able to keep contributing to it, keep getting the government bonus. So that won't change. What they have said and what they have proposed is a new product, which may come in from April 2028. They haven't set any timeframes yet. And basically that product will be for first-time buyers only. So the lifetime ISA, you can use it for first-time buyer or you can use it for your retirement as well.

30:05Most people use it for a first-time buyer perspective, but some people top up their retirement savings as well. But the new product will be for first-time buyers only. And crucially, the new product, instead of paying the bonus on a monthly basis as you save, you will save into it and they will only pay you the bonus at the end when you go to withdraw and you go to actually kind of purchase the house. From their perspective, that means that you can withdraw from the product for other reasons without incurring a penalty. But from our perspective, that takes away from one of the main benefits of the lifetime ISA, which is the saving and investing habits that it gets people into.

30:44So as I say, I'll kind of pause there, but that's where we stand. There's an open consultation at the moment. The government has not said yet how much you can pay into the product. They haven't said how much the government bonus will be, what value of property you could buy. So there's lots and lots of variables out there that we still just don't know right now. So I would say to people right now, the lifetime ISA is still there, will be there for the foreseeable future. So if you're planning to buy a house under£450 ,000, there really is no better place to build up a deposit. Nowhere else you get£1 ,000 free from the government every year.

31:18But from 2028 onwards, there may also be this new other product out there, which is first time buyer only.

31:25Brian Byrnes: Yeah, we kind of had this sort of crossover from the help to buy ISA to the lifetime ISA. is confusing for a bit the lifetime isa was a miles better product um probably because of the limit as well and and the amount you could save into it um wasn't capped in terms of like monthly contributions and stuff like that so we had had a like a period of change before but it feels like the lifetime isa is only really now it's like getting going and then they suddenly strip it out and change it but we know that there's improvements if you were to say don't do anything but just improve the lifetime isa we know what the improvements are there but i'd love to hear what they would be from yourself yeah so i can be pretty categorical about this as i say we have the largest community of aspiring first-time buyers in the uk we are the largest provider of the the lifetime isa if this new product came along we would offer it as well and everything would be fine.

32:22I can categorically say we do not need this new product. We don't need another ISA out there that helps people do the same thing as the Help to Buy ISA did, as the Lifetime ISA did. We just don't need any more complication out there. And I know we'll talk about the ISA rules at some point. We don't need this. We just need some small fixes to the Lifetime ISA. What we have created with the Lifetime ISA over the last 10 years is a product that over a million and a half young people are regularly saving and investing into, 300 ,000 people have gotten onto the property ladder with it, one every 10 minutes from a money box perspective, and people are topping up their retirement savings as well.

33:00If we had set out to achieve that 10 years ago, we would have been absolutely delighted. People are doing exactly what we want them to be doing in this product. So we should build on that success rather than creating a new, more restrictive product. Now, we both know it's not perfect. We talked about that house price cap, which has been£450 ,000 since it was launched. That obviously needs to go up. There is a withdrawal penalty if you use your money for anything other than buying a home or for retirement. That needs to come down from 25 % to 20 % so that you only lose the government bonus. You don't lose any of your own money.

33:34Those are two super easy fixes, which John Healy, the Chancellor, can do on the 28th of October, rather than waiting two or three years for another ISA that we just don't need. Yeah, yeah.

33:45Brian Byrnes: I agree with you. We've already highlighted this in the previous podcast that we did last time was just just move it up to 600k just put it at six what's why would you basically stop people buying in the capital essentially in large parts of the capital especially if you want two bed or more you ain't getting that from most of the capital 450k so do you have to move outside of london i would absolutely love for it to jump up to 550 600 000 whatever it would have been if it had been linked to house price inflation back in 2017, as it should have been. From my conversations, as you mentioned, we've been in talking to MPs, we've been talking to the government and Treasury.

34:26Realistically, I probably don't think that's going to happen right now, given the pressure on public finances. We all know that there's not that much money to go around. So at the very least, we are saying that you should be reviewing this house price cap on an annual basis in line with house price inflation. So if house prices have gone up 4%, you should be moving the house price cap up by 4%. So I think that's probably that's not going to suit everybody but i think from a treasury perspective in terms of what's achievable that's what we are pushing for as i say i'd love to see it go up to 600 000 i

34:58Brian Byrnes: just don't necessarily think that that's realistic no you're right having think thought about it obviously we you know we want to see that up personally i think if you were to do anything just take the five percent off of the exactly the penalty because it's ridiculous you get the interest in your payments and you still lose money like it just goes against exact all habits created if someone really desperately needs that cash they shouldn't be penalized i think that's the one thing they can do if they don't change the 450 000 most of the uk can buy a house of 450k or less i said that to mps as well look 450 000 pounds buys you a hell of a lot of house in most parts of the country and we can't forget about london and the southeast but as you say there's a couple of really easy fixes that you can do there.

35:44As you say, reducing the withdrawal penalty, either for everybody or even like worst case scenario, just reduce it for people who want to buy over£450 ,000, right? These are little tweaks that you can do to a product that is working incredibly well. So when I gave evidence to the Treasury Select Committee about the lifetime I see, yes, I talked about the people that were buying houses. Yes, I talked about the people that were supplementing their retirement savings. The number one benefit that I said was the habits that it gets people into when it comes to saving and investing. You and I spend our careers trying to get people into good habits when it comes to saving and investing.

36:21Put your money aside on a monthly basis and forget about it. The Lifetime ISA has done that. So 84 % of people who have used it said it has created better financial habits for them and financial habits that will stick with them for life after they've purchased their first home. So this is doing brilliant work with people who are 18 to 39 and habits that will stay with them for life so as i say simple tweaks is so much easier than designing an entire new product that we just don't need

36:48Brian Byrnes: well yeah and then we've got to spend our like we know how hard it is to explain a suction shares isa or even a cash or an isa to anyone yeah and trying to get them to get it we've just spent years doing that then we have to start again with this first-time buyer i said who knows it could take years for that to like have the same level of understanding of a lifetime isa which is just why like it's backwards when things are going to get away from people along those times but that's not the only change right but they've got the cash isa limits changing 2028 i believe yes yes no 2027 27 sorry yes this is what i mean this is answering my own questions i forget all of this stuff because it's just constantly moving around um what are you seeing at the moment there have Are you seeing any interesting data about how people have reacted to the cash ISA change?

37:42Brian Byrnes: And obviously, the reason why they did that was they wanted more people to put more money in their stocks and shares ISA. Have they reacted positively to that? Or has it made it less of an attractive product to open at all or anything along those lines? So I think we might see some changes next year when the cash ISA limit comes down to£12 ,000. And they're also bringing in more restrictions around the stocks and shares ISA, which we can talk about, which is really, really, really frustrating. What we have seen so far, both when the speculation was rife about this before the budget last year, and then the Chancellor announced these changes in the budget in November, there's already been a lot of confusion with people of like, what are these rules?

38:20What are they going to mean for me? When do they come in? Can I only save£12 ,000 this year? So we've seen a lot of questions come in from customers already confused about how these changes impact them, and they haven't even kind of come in yet. Again, there's been a consultation over this summer looking at the kind of finer details of the rules that have been brought in. So right now, there's just a little bit of confusion about the rules, which obviously we're doing a lot of financial education about. I would be very, very interested to see the behavioral data as of the 6th of April next year when the cash ISA allowance comes down.

38:53So it will be£12 ,000 from next year. You can put the additional£8 ,000 into a stocks and shares ISA. I would be very interested to see how many incremental investors can be proven to have started investing because of these changes. My strong recommendation when the government was considering this was it will not work. This will not create any new investors. The reason that people don't invest in this country is multifaceted. They're scared of it, right? We have created a industry where the risk of investing is incredibly prominent. You get all of the risk warnings of capital at risk, value of investments might go up and down, the risk of not investing is completely invisible, right?

39:34The inflation eating into your savings. And we've made it so much easier not to invest than to actually invest. Like the fact that people actually start investing and get through all of the various journeys is incredible to me. We need to make it easier for people to actually invest. So people are scared of it. They're not going to suddenly start investing because the cash ISO allowance comes down from to 12 000 pounds so yeah i'll be watching that data with interest as of 6th of

40:00Brian Byrnes: april next year what i was really interested to see was interesting that hasn't really kicked off yet but of course because it has not changed but i just wondered whether or not it would like it alter patterns attached even just like with the news out there of it um because when i did the numbers so i think it was 14 of the uk off the top of my head this may fluctuate slightly based on the data set that you're looking at can actually max out stocks and shares ISA in the first place. And even when you cut that down to the 12 ,000, it doesn't increase by a huge amount. So the vast majority of people, totally unaffected by banging money in their cash ISA for their emergency fund or their holiday or their wedding or whatever that might well be.

40:39Brian Byrnes: So, you know, pinch of salt. It's just a confusion that these things create. And then you layer that on top of the stocks and shares ISA because people will then go, right, well, cool. You know, X, Y, and Z account are offering me four or five percent on my uninvested cash well i'll just put money in there instead and then i can save i can invest if i want to as well but then they came for that yeah um what happened there and what are you seeing around that and any suggestions yeah and look it's an important one we need to be kind of careful and nuanced about this right because for you and i this is frustrating from a policy uh perspective it's bringing in additional complexity on the stocks and shares isa which we'll go into the detail of in a second but for the majority of people this just won't matter um it's complexity for us we've got lots of team working on this over the next five or six months i wish they were working on other things yeah in terms of financial education guidance and advice to get people investing we also have people working on that but i would prefer more people working on that rather than technical policy changes to to the isa rules right so it is frustrating for you and i but for people listening to this vast majority of people, it's not going to impact them.

41:51They can still use the cash ISA up to£12 ,000 and they can still use the stocks and shares ISA. What's going to come in next year from the 6th of April is if you're holding cash within a stocks and shares ISA, so you've got a cash account there that you use to trade, buy investments, all that sort of stuff, the interest that you earn on that cash will be reduced by 22%. So there'll be a 22 % charge on the interest that you earn on a cash parked in the stocks and shares isa there is also restrictions on the amount of your investments that you can hold in money market funds so those are basically kind of cash like products and you can't hold 100 of your investments in those you can hold 99 apparently that's that's okay um so there's these kind of annoying restrictions which for the vast majority of people won't matter it just builds up complexity which is the exact sort of thing that we should be

42:44Brian Byrnes: taking away when we're trying to get people to invest yeah well it's annoyed me because i'm holding nearly 12 and a half 14 grand worth of cash at the moment that's earning interest because i always keep three to five percent in cash yeah just and it was a nice little added bonus of like okay well you know i always keep it there to deploy at certain times when i want to deploy it it's a probably a terrible decision this is not financial advice in any way shape or form please don't follow my strategy you've got to follow your own but it's just i like having that there if I get a big drop, I'll go steaming in.

43:16Brian Byrnes: I did it with the tariffs. I did it in COVID and it's paid off and worked for me, but it might not necessarily work for you because you may time it wrong and no one can tell you when the bottom or the top is. So that's really important to say, guys, when you're listening to that. But it's annoying for me because I keep that amount in there and recently been getting 4.5%, 5 % on it. And now I've got to like re-figure out what the hell's going on with that. The only other way of doing that was money market funds or turning off the interest completely. So it just sits there, which is just enormously frustrating.

43:54Brian Byrnes: But yeah, it's extremely frustrating because our finance show, we're in this group, there's about 30 of us in this finance chat group, all of the social media people in finance. And they were like, oh, well, you can do this 99 % thing with money market funds. I was like, yeah, but do you know what a money market fund is? No, not really. So, oh, okay. Well, then, so then how on earth are you going to explain that to people? You can invest in stocks and shares, and then it's got to go like this, then it's got to go like that, then it's got to go like this. It's just like, for fuck's sake. Yeah. How are we here?

44:26Yeah. And if you look back, the stocks and shares ISA is an absolutely brilliant product. And it's brilliant because it's simple. Like, if you think there's very few countries in the world where you get the equivalent of£20 ,000 that you can invest and all of your returns are tax-free. And it's been around for the last kind of 25 years. You can see there's more and more ISA millionaires every year of people that have been doing this. And all of that money is tax-free. And as I say, one of the major benefits of the stocks and shares ISA, it's incredibly simple to talk about. And you say, look, it's an absolute no-brainer.

45:00If you're investing, you should be doing it in a stocks and shares ISA. There's no kind of drawbacks to it. That's all going to change next year. Not that it's still not going to be an absolutely brilliant product, But when you and I are talking about it, we're going to have to start talking about this 22 % charge or the restrictions on money market funds, all this sort of stuff, which is going to be irrelevant to 99 % of people. But it just makes that decision and process to start investing just that little bit more complex and unattainable for people. And that's where the frustration comes in.

45:31Brian Byrnes: Well, the data backs this up. Obviously, there's 65 % felt more confident investing last year than the year before. and 12 % of people invested for the first time in 2025. That's excellent. And I think that's largely down to the work that all of us do to get people into a stocks and shares ISO or their pension, I will say, and add. But it seems like Brits are finally starting to become investors, which is awesome because, you know, we're trying to change this ourselves, but complication will deter them from, I think. And that's why it's doubly frustrating on this stuff. And look, it's not, I hope and expect that it's not going to be a massive kind of catastrophe in terms of people suddenly stopping investing.

46:13I think it will be a bit of a headwind. And again, a headwind for people like you and I trying to explain the benefits of investing the accounts that people should use. The reason it's doubly frustrating is because we are seeing traction. And from a money box perspective, we're seeing traction from younger savers and younger investors. And those stats that you've mentioned there kind of back it up. And that's because the work that you guys are doing from a content kind of creation perspective as well is educating people on the benefits of investing. From a policy perspective, there's actually really good stuff happening as well.

46:41So there's targeted support, which will help people get more recommendations of taking that first step into investing. All of the stuff that I mentioned about risk warnings, they're getting more balanced and more kind of pro investing. The government is doing this retail investing campaign again, talking about the benefits of investing. The squirrel, indeed. But if you think about that as an idea, right, The thought that the FCA, the Treasury, the government, and all providers could all simultaneously be talking positively about investing, that would have been madness five or ten years ago. So the idea that that is happening is absolutely brilliant, which is why this ISA stuff is just frustrating, because it's a headwind when everything else is a tailwind at the moment, and we are getting more people investing in this country.

47:22When I first started, it was 5%.

47:23Brian Byrnes: It was 5 % of the whole country had a stocks and shares ISA. That was five years ago. and we're in this position now. So we're doing the right thing. And if you look at the volume of money that's going into stocks and shares ISAs, I think from when HMRC, the last records that I saw back in 2019, sorry, back in 2009, 2010, I think it was about nine or 10 billion that was going into a stocks and shares ISA. 2024, 2025, that's gone up to 31 billion. So much, much more money is going into stocks and shares ISAs and people are investing and say, that's just one kind of data point. so there's absolutely traction here yes it could happen a little bit quicker but there's a lot of tailwinds and we're we're seeing progress um so we just have to hope that these restrictions and complexities around the stocks and shares isa are no more than a kind of gentle headwind so really interestingly when you sent me this as well i love this so the ones who got more confident mostly said it was because they felt more informed yeah which is awesome and it's not because they had more money.

48:24Brian Byrnes: It's because they felt like they had the ability to understand it.

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49:41Brian Byrnes: And now back to the episode.

49:46And that's down to, again, our research has shown, that's down to the effort that they put in. So we have seen a direct correlation between the amount of financial security, frankly, the amount of money that you have versus the time that you spend on your finances. Net worth. Yeah, the net wealth, right? So the time that you spend on your finances directly correlated with how confident that you feel. And for people in our research that describe themselves as confident with their money, they ended up with 86 ,000 pounds more wealth than somebody who described themselves as not financially confident.

50:19And that, it sounds pretty obvious, right? Because if you're not confident about these things, you're going to bury your head in the sand. You're not going to make kind of proactive decisions with your money, whereas you will do if you're financially confident. But the thing that makes you confident is the effort that you put in. And I always say to people, they always ask for money tips and hacks. And I think they're looking for kind of two for one offers or a stock tip or whatever it might be but it's just get yourself into the habit of spending 30 minutes a week on your finances and that will make you more confident and more confident people end up with 86 000 more

50:53Brian Byrnes: than people who aren't confident with their money yeah and and and the thing which we sort of took away from when we first spoke about that piece of research which you did which was awesome by the way which i really like the map and and like all different areas of the uk and how they feel confident about their finances versus others. It was a really cool piece of research. And that's not a salary thing, by the way, in terms of people ending up with more money. People on lower salaries that describe themselves as confident end up with far more money. It really is about an effort and a confidence thing that defines your outcomes rather than how much you're earning.

51:26Brian Byrnes: Where do you start then? So would you break it down into say, I need to learn about 10 different topics and then I'd spend 30 minutes on those one individual topic each week, come away with it you know call that 12 weeks 90 days you come out of it where they're basically all of the basics of education that you need like that's how i started and i started like showing my age here before things like these kind of podcasts were around where you could just listen to somebody for 30 minutes a week and feel more confident and financially exactly yeah but i was a like financial advisor and i was absolutely shocking with my own uh money And I was looking after overseas customers, right, where things like ISIS and pensions and stuff like that just weren't appropriate for people who were investing overseas, right?

52:11So even things like that when I was starting off, like those are things that I needed to teach myself for my own finances. So I would just have a notes app on my phone and I would just have a running list of things that I was confused about or I didn't understand. Or I was like, oh, I've heard this topic and I need to learn a little bit more about it. And then every Sunday I would take myself to a coffee shop and I would look up and I'd spend 30 minutes working out kind of what that was, starting with basic concepts like ISAs and pensions, moving up to things like, all right, how does tax relief actually work?

52:40Looking at my paycheck and thinking, right, how much am I saving in tax by paying into my pension? And I would just have list after list after list of that. And as I say, 30 minutes a week, 26 hours a year. And you'd be amazed at how quickly this stuff compounds, as well as compound interest on your investments. the investment that you make into your own personal finance knowledge will compound as well

53:00Brian Byrnes: so i just had a note app on my phone so we did a like a on a youtube video and we asked chat gpt we said i've got 12 weeks i need to learn about one money topic for 30 30 minutes a week each day that would take me from x level and this is what i know now and what i'm comfortable with and what i'm not and it spits it back out in seconds and it gives you the whole plan and even tells you where to go and it gave us videos and podcasts and things that people can go and watch and and learn from or even articles that they can read and so like you have all of this at your fingertips and it's and it's one commute man it's one train journey like just bury yourself in your phone and and get onto it because it makes such a difference um but over half of people who felt less confident blamed economic instability um how do you actually invest then when the world feels like it's on fire around you how do you get over that and take control and bring back you know this sort of confidence you can do these things you've got to try and ignore these headlines as much as you possibly can do when you're building up your own financial security and your your wealth um economic instability geopolitics instability has always always been around you can look back on charts going up 150 years of all of these events which i'm sure were just absolutely terrifying at the time in terms of world war one world war two you've got the 1929 crash you move forward you've got cuban missile crisis you've got black monday in 1987 you've got dom.com crisis all of that sort of stuff right um and you can overlay that with a map of investment gains and returns and as i say that map just kind of keeps going up and to the right because tiny little blips exactly absolutely when in doubt zoom out um because human beings and companies like to progress we like to make more stuff.

54:48Companies like to make kind of more profits. Human ingenuity is basically what you're investing in when you're investing in the stock market. And that has continued on. As I say, you look at the last three and a half years where market returns have continued to grow and grow, even though it feels every time you flick on the news, which I know nobody does anymore, but you open up any of your kind of social medias and you see just horrific scenes from a geopolitical kind of perspective or economic perspective or environmental, all of that sort stuff so it sounds flippant and again spend a lot of our time at moneybox customers just trying to say look you've got to ignore this stuff as much as you possibly can do and anybody that has started investing over the last kind of 5 10 15 years has seen the investment growth and the returns but it's getting harder to do because all of those events that i mentioned over the last 100 years you'd kind of have to go out of your way to switch on the news or pick up a newspaper to see that they were happening you can't avoid it now we all have our phones it's live streamed to our faces 24 7 yeah so anywhere in the world as i say i keep saying it sounds flippant but is it's very very difficult to ignore this stuff now but you've got to disassociate everything that you see from a headline perspective versus building your own wealth in your your isas and pensions because all of the evidence of the last 100 200 years has shown thankfully that these two things are not not linked and companies can continue to profit and you can continue to see investment returns despite all of those negative headlines we're seeing something different with gen x though

56:17Brian Byrnes: which is 59 of them aren't as confident or on that they're on track and with no idea with the quarter saying they have no idea how much they have actually got saved yeah which is quite interesting so what what's different about that generation perhaps to the millennials or the gen I think one of the things that we're seeing that's different is they have so many options at their disposal when it comes to saving or investing. You can open up any app you want in five or 10 minutes and invest in any asset class. Pretty much, yeah. You've got people on social media talking about so many different options of what you can save into, what you can invest into.

56:56This is the hot new thing, all of that sort of stuff. So we're seeing good traction in terms of people opening up accounts and doing things and saving and investing more. What they don't really have is a plan that brings it all together. And we see this from a retirement perspective as well. People are, thankfully, due to auto-enrollment, saving lots more into their pension. They're just not particularly confident that they're on track for a decent retirement because they have no financial advisor holding this all together, as they might have done a couple of generations ago.

57:24Brian Byrnes: Yeah, they just think 200 quid is going in my workplace pension, but I have absolutely no idea what's happening with it. Yeah, and I think we're going to see progress there from an AI perspective over the next five to 10 years, where people will be able, people are obviously already using general purpose LLMs for personal finance and advice, right? So technology will be able to pull this together into a financial plan for Gen X for over the next kind of five to 10 years. But right now, I think they just feel a little bit lost in terms of, okay, I've got these different accounts, I've got these different kind of app providers.

57:59How does it all relate to an overall kind of financial plan? Am I on track? Like that, that's the number one question that is behind everything that I've ever seen from a financial advice and personal finance perspective. People are always asking a variation of one question and that's, am I okay?

58:14Brian Byrnes: Yeah. Am I okay financially? Am I doing the right things? Which has been harder and harder for people to feel like they are on the right track. It's one of the features that I keep hammering on once we've sort of developed a lot of the app that we still need to develop for Gains app is like, I really want this like financial MOT sort of scoring system about where I'm at versus like age, location, having lots of data sets, pull this in, and then spitting out sort of a number with an action plan of things that they can go and do. not on advice spectrum because we have to be careful there but i really want them to like have a barometer like okay i'm here i can and here's the next step so i can do to get up and then be able to track that you know over a quarter or a month or six months etc because i do feel like that is the case like they sort of come online they're like jesus christ there is so much information like where on earth do i go um what do i do how do i make decisions i think just picking one is just better than nothing it's kind of the same where it's like oh well this fund is 0.15 on fees and this one is 0.18 well guess what mate those three months that you didn't get going because you were figuring it out is cost you potentially you know one two three percent gains so like you know just get going and get started try something something's always better than nothing yeah and i think it will help with confidence as you grow because you you don't just switch a flip a switch and go i'm not financially confident and i know everything like this doesn't work you've got to you've got to put the work in even at these young ages yeah absolutely and i think people need context um and one of the things that we see and i've seen martin lewis talk about this as well is a lot of the questions that you get are questions of permission where people have done all of their research right and they've said oh i'm thinking about opening up a Stockton Shares ISA with this provider and putting in 200 quid a month.

1:00:18And they turn to, you probably get this from your friends and family as well. All the time. We get it all the time. And as I say, I've seen Martin Lewis talk about it and it's like, yeah, go for it. But they just, they have that lack of confidence in that kind of final step. And I saw an article over the weekend that basically said from a personal finance perspective, perfect is the enemy of good. And 80 % when it comes to personal finances, like that's perfectly good enough yeah you could drive yourself absolutely mental looking for a fund that's like three basis points cheaper than the one that you're already in but get yourself 80 of the way there make sure that you have a financial plan and you're contributing regularly and then go do the stuff that's more important in life like hanging out with your friends and family and all the stuff that brings us joy right yeah um but you and i have that benefit from the job that we do we just need to give that confidence and permission to other people that yes you're on the right track from a context perspective you're in line with your peers or you're ahead of your peers but you're doing the right stuff and if you keep on this you're you're going to be okay but

1:01:19Brian Byrnes: listen thank you so much mate and i i've got tons more questions but as always we never get through them all because you're a wealth of knowledge and we we go deep into this stuff every time um where are we sending people today money box app yeah just go on uh you can download from the app store you can go on to uh our website and check us out we've got 1.9 million customers with us now 23 billion in assets largest community aspiring first-time buyers so i saw the financial results come out they were talking about them from um on on linkedin quite heavily like it was went off and I was like the growth this past year has been astronomical like the amount of users you've onboarded the amount of assets under management that you've got going on is crazy and hats off to you you guys are doing a fantastic job every time I look there's a new advert out for you hiring someone I'm like wow these guys are nailing it and the education side of it as well which I think just gets left behind with some apps you're a market leader on I think it's awesome That's very kind.

1:02:21Brian Byrnes: Thank you. Yeah, definitely go check out Moneybox if you're looking to get yourself a lifetime item, get yourself on the property ladder. It's a great, great start, but they have a wealth of different products as well. So I've been working on something super exciting for the last 12 months, and I am very, very proud to finally bring it to you. And it is called Gains App. My whole thing with this was we've been speaking to many of you guys about the rising costs of living and how hard it is to actually manage your money. So I thought, why not actually solve this and build something for you guys that you can use every single day?

1:02:56Brian Byrnes: So Gainsab is literally that. You can connect all of your banks in one single place and see exactly what's going on with your spending. We even pre-categorize all of your spending super visually so you can see what's going on and make plans for your big goals ahead. Plus, we've layered in something called instant cashback and we've calculated that the average UK salary could save£1 ,091 a year just by using GainsApp for your spending. And it's super simple to use, easy to connect. We are FCA agent status as well, so your money is super safe. And you can get started right now by following the link in the description or visiting gainsapp.com.

1:03:35Brian Byrnes: And now back to the episode.