What you should do with your Child Trust Fund voucher

If you're one of the many new parents who has received a £250 Child Trust Fund voucher to invest for your newborn, you might be wondering what you should do with it. One new mother, MoneyWeek's very own Merryn Somerset Webb, knows exactly where she's going to invest her daughter's voucher. And one thing's for sure - despite the tax advantages, she won't be topping it up...

I am not sure I entirely approve of the child trust fund (CTF), despite Gordon Brown's extra dollop of cash for them in the budget. It's not the principle of the thing -there's nothing wrong with the idea of trying to promote equality among young adults -it's just I can't see how CTFs can possibly do that.

For starters, inequality is rarely a matter of a couple of hundred pounds (most newborns get only £250 under the scheme, which will be topped up by another £250 at the age of seven). Instead it's a matter of education - some understand how bank accounts, mortgages, credit cards and compound interest really work, others do not.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.