In financial services the desire to over-complicate seems endemic. Junior ISAs, for example: designed to be for the parents, guardians, parole officers etc of children under 18, Junior ISAs are staple media fodder yet pretty much redundant for the vast majority of people.
Why? Because parents have their own adult ISA allowance of £15,000 each for each and every tax year.
If parents want to save for their kids' future the adult ISA allowances will be more than enough for nearly everyone; how many couples with young children will be salting away £30,000 a year from taxed earnings, before putting even more aside for the nippers?
"Not many" is the obvious rhetorical answer.
Yet Junior ISAs continue to be a source of fascinatation for the financial media totally out of proportion to their actual utility. Nobody with a brain should go near them. This short video explains why.
As ever, do not watch this short clip thinking you will be given chapter and verse. I cannot do that in a timely fashion and - if I could - I would be straying into giving advice. Which is uber-naughty.
