What to do with your child trust fund voucher

published 20 February 2006

Open a child trust fund or the Government will do it for you.

HM Revenue & Customs has issued more than two million vouchers worth at least £250 each to families with children born on or after 1 September 2002. If you don't use the vouchers within a year of issue, the Government will invest the money on the child's behalf.

The first batch of vouchers was sent out in January 2005, so time is running out. But the latest figures show that only 1.1 million vouchers have been used to open accounts. The money in a child trust fund (CTF) grows tax-free until the child is 18. Parents and other relatives and friends can add top-ups of up to £1,200 a year.

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The longer you delay, the more you miss out on tax-free growth. If you had invested your £250 voucher in Invesco Perpetual's UK Smaller Companies fund when CTFs went live in April, you would now have £296 an increase of 18%.

Had you picked the F&C Emerging Markets investment trust, your money would have soared 51% to £377, says Faith Archer in The Daily Telegraph Money. So go on, what are you waiting for?

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.