Timing pays off for the early bird ISA investor

19th August 2020

Early tax year ISA investors could be thousands of pounds better off, according to research1 looking at the investing habits of hypothetical ISA investors over the last 10 and 20 years. 

The study concludes that if you were an ‘Early Shirley’ and invested your full ISA allowance on 6 April for the past 20 tax years, you would be nearly £12,000 better off now than ‘Last Minute Lara’ – someone who had waited to invest on the last day of each tax year.

With not everyone able to afford the full ISA investment in one lump sum, investing like ‘Monthly Monty’, who drip-feeds money into an ISA with a monthly savings plan, would achieve better returns than investing it all at the last minute. By splitting your annual ISA allowance into 12 monthly investments your investment would have grown to £296,247 – still £7,496 more than if you had waited until the last minute.

 

1Fidelity International, April 2020

The value of investments can go down as well as up and you may not get back the full amount you invested. The past is not a guide to future performance and past performance may not necessarily be repeated.