Hi folks, happy new year. It's a little bit late to be saying that now, but welcome to the first five minute Friday of 2019.

Great to have you with me.

If you're a listener to the Meaningful Money Podcast, you'll know by now that we're in the middle of season 13,

which we've called millennial finance, and it's looking at the challenges faced by millennials or really anybody

that's getting started on their personal finance journey and I want to keep all the

content coming out of meaningful money during this season on message if you like rather than drop in

in between your sodes or videos that don't really relate to that subject of folks getting

started so today I want to go a little bit back to basics and cover the main types of ISA, that's individual savings account, which are available to UK investors today here at the start of 2019. So let's crack on with that and put five

minutes on the clock down here in the bottom left. Say a quick thank you to my

friends at seven investment management for continuing to sponsor meaningful money

and let's crack on.

So primarily there are five different types of ISA available in the UK and the first is a cash ISA.

Now a cash ISA is simply a tax-free bank account, so whatever interest you earn on money you have saved in a cash ISA, you won't pay any tax on it.

Now to be honest, this is a bit of a thin benefit because the first 1,000 pounds of interest

on any savings you have is tax-free anyway if you're a basic rate taxpayer.

And even if you're a higher rate taxpayer taxpayer the first 500 pounds worth of interest is

tax-free so in order to really benefit from a cash-ice so you need to have enough money

in there to earn more than the already tax-free interest amount so cashizes are of negligible benefit really. They're a

good place to hold an emergency fund as long as you can access it quickly and

also any money that you're likely to need in the next two maybe three years.

Ultimately though where you put that money is going to be driven by the interest

rate you get rather than by the fairly slim tax benefits of a cash ISA.

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