Fraser Glenn, 35, and his partner Sophie Bower, 30, both started saving into Lifetime ISAs a few years ago with the intention of using the funds to get on to the property ladder.<\/p>\n
But after searching for flats in 2024 – looking at over 30 properties in central and east London – they realised how difficult it was to find one under the price cap that would meet their needs.<\/p>\n
“People may think we’re talking about luxury, big properties with big bedrooms, multiple properties – that’s not what we were talking about at all,” Fraser says. <\/p>\n
“We’re talking about one, two-bedroom flats; the costs significantly more than \u00a3450,000 if you want to live within touching distance of central London where lots of us work.”<\/p>\n
In order to buy their “modest two-bedroom flat” in Tower Hamlets for \u00a3521,000, Sophie withdrew her money from the LISA and lost \u00a33,500. <\/p>\n
Fraser decided to keep his money in the LISA to avoid the penalty – leaving \u00a350,000 of his savings “in limbo”, as he can’t access the money until he is 60 years old without losing a chunk of it.<\/p>\n
“This is a savings tool which hindered rather than helped us, which leaves a bad taste,” he says.<\/p>\n
“What you’re either doing is encouraging young people to move out of London where a lot of jobs and opportunities are, and then paying huge amounts to get in on the train, or you have to cash out like we did and take the loss,” Sophie says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fraser Glenn, 35, and his partner Sophie Bower, 30, both started saving into Lifetime ISAs a few years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-620274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}