Did you have a Child Trust Fund?

‘Finances for the Future Generations’

Thinking about how the future generations will manage their money is always on the minds of parents across the country. How do we teach them about money in a contactless age, how will they afford to live, what job will they do……a plethora of questions can be asked?

At Just Finance Foundation, we love engaging with young people about money.

Our Fantastic LifeSavers programme helps teachers deliver effective financial education to children in primary schools. We also engage every week with our Financial Friday activities that target some key questions around money and encourage children to understand the basic foundations before they dive into the larger more complicated financial concepts. Let’s face it, knowing what coins look like is a really good place to start!

 In September we launched an initiative to remind people about the Child Trust Funds. Child Trust Funds were a scheme introduced to encourage saving for children. The scheme was open to all parents of children born between 1st September 2002 and 2nd January 2011.

 The first set of children who are on the scheme were able to access their money on 1st September 2020.

‘700,000 accounts have been forgotten about or ‘lost’’

76% of parents in the UK opened an account when the scheme launched and HMRC estimates there are 700,000 accounts which have been forgotten about or ‘lost’. The scheme has been replaced by ‘Junior ISAs’ since January 2011.

If you are trying to get hold of your Child Trust Fund there are some steps here to help you through it. Children who were in care have in some cases had difficulty accessing their accounts - the Share Foundation have been doing a great job at finding these.