It’s half-term and more rain is forecast. We’re now somewhere around day 40 of what meteorologists politely call a wet spell, but what parents of young children are more likely to call “indoor captivity”.
Which is how I found myself (as the young ones were parked in front of Disney+), staring at their Junior Isas and asking the questions many parents wrestle with. Have I taken enough risk with their investment choices, am I contributing enough each month and, perhaps most loaded of all, have I treated my two children fairly?
It is, of course, an undeniably privileged dilemma. Many families face far harsher challenges and most adults do not even have an Isa for themselves, let alone for their children. I do count myself lucky to still be contributing at all. Some two out of five Junior Isas had no money paid in during the 2023-24 tax year, according to HM Revenue & Customs data analysed by Nottingham Building Society.
That’s about 967,000 accounts to which nothing was added, up from 869,000 the previous tax year. There is a fast-widening gap between intention and reality, which will no doubt be gnawing at many parents’ consciences.
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Context matters here though. These years coincided with the full force of the cost of living crisis: inflation surged, interest rates climbed and household budgets tightened. For many families long-term saving was not abandoned, but rather squeezed out by short-term survival. This is unlikely to change anytime soon as employers batten down the hatches and the labour market changes dramatically.
Of course, beyond household spreadsheets sits something far less rational: the hum of parental anxiety. The persistent sense that you must make the right decisions, provide the best start, anticipate risks — short-term and long-term — before they arrive.
The Junior Isa is arguably one of the most effective financial tools we have for that purpose. The mechanics are simple. Up to £9,000 can be contributed each year, growth is tax-free and the money is locked away until your child is 18. That final feature is both the limitation and the strength. There can be no dipping in for school fees or emergency boiler replacements — once the money is in the wrapper, it is in.
In a world of widening intergenerational inequality, spurred on by spiralling house prices and debilitating student debt, such products matter. But Junior Isas are not just good for giving children a head start, they also nudge adults to change their own behaviour.
During my time working at two big investment platforms, Junior Isa platform fees were cut to zero. This wasn’t out of pure altruism. The logic (and data) was straightforward: parents who open a Junior Isa often start investing for themselves soon afterwards. It is a gateway product to investing — exactly the kind that policymakers should be championing (Rachel Reeves take note).
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The real power of Junior Isas does not lie in hitting the £9,000 allowance. Most families never will. In fact, only 3 per cent of Junior Isas had the full amount paid in during the 2023-24 tax year. What’s more important is consistency — regular monthly contributions, even modest ones, accumulate dramatically over 18 years.
That is why The Times, under its five-point plan to make Britain better off, argues that the government and employers should do more to encourage parents and families to invest.
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But what do you actually invest in and how do you do it fairly when you have more than one child?
I began in the way that many financially-minded parents do: selecting different portfolios for each child. My thinking was that I was diversifying risk and that, as I explained more to them about investing, it could make for interesting talking points and some healthy sibling competition when it came to portfolio performance.
But maternal fairness instincts have overruled. It became uncomfortable to think that their outcomes might diverge significantly, purely because of my choices. So gradually I have steered their portfolios to broadly similar global equity exposure through low-cost funds, with a modest “core and satellite” structure. The core sits in passive global trackers such as the Fidelity Index World fund and Vanguard S&P 500 exchange traded fund; the satellites add small allocations to higher-growth areas such as healthcare, emerging markets and technology via investment trusts and actively managed funds including Worldwide Healthcare Trust and Scottish Oriental Smaller Companies. Contributions are drip-fed monthly.
It is all deliberately boring and manageable, and yet I still find myself fretting. Even with identical strategies, outcomes will never be symmetrical. There’s the timing of investments and the second child often suffers from what’s called second-sibling syndrome — just as they tend to have fewer baby photos, they’ll probably end up with fewer gifts — including financial — than your first child (regardless of the godparents you choose).
But ultimately, fairness is not about identical balances, it is about consistent effort.
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There is, however, a more uncomfortable truth that every parent and grandparent should hear: before investing for children, you must invest for yourself.
It may sound selfish, but it is not. It is the financial equivalent of the aeroplane oxygen-mask rule: secure your own first before assisting others. Your children cannot borrow to fund your retirement. You can borrow — at least temporarily — to help them. Money placed into a Junior Isa is locked away; money in your own Isa remains accessible.
Too often, parents prioritise children’s savings while neglecting their own financial resilience — underfunding pensions, skipping emergency buffers, sacrificing long-term security. That trade-off rarely ends well. Household stability matters far more than any single account balance. One of the greatest gifts you can give your children is not a Junior Isa pot at all, but the security of parents who will not depend on them later.
Let’s be honest, parental anxiety never disappears. It simply evolves — from sleepless nights fretting over feeding schedules to worries about whether you have saved enough, prepared enough, done enough. So yes, Junior Isas matter. They help families build long-term savings habits. They introduce adults to investing. They teach children the slow magic of compounding.
But like most things in parenting (and investing) perfection is not the goal, consistency is.
Maike Currie is the head of personal finance at the savings consolidation firm PensionBee