Investing Cashback Offers
With the new changes to the ISA rules, you can now have as many ISAs in a tax year as you wish (so long as you don’t pay in over £20k total).
Historically, there have always been great offers available if you open an ISA as once you opened one with a provider you were stuck with them for a year, and since you could only open 1 per year they weren’t worth taking advantage of.
Now that this is no longer the case, you can likely make quite a bit of cashback by taking advantage of the following offers. Please note, this is not quick cash and you will need to be patient in order to reap the rewards and cashback is never guaranteed (although 99% of them time it will track).
Shepherds Friendly - £145 to £400 cashback (boosted today only)
There is a boosted offer for this on TopCashback for today only, but there tends to always be an offer available for this account. You can bag yourself varying amounts of cashback based on monthly investments.
TopCashback - Search “Shepherds Friendly Stocks & Shares ISAs”*
Quidco - Search “Shepherds Friendly Stocks & Shares ISAs”*
£30-£49.99 per month - get £145 cashback
£50-£99.99 per month - get £170 cashback
£100-£499.99 per month - get £315 cashback
£500-£999.99 per month - get £355 cashback
£1,000+ per month - get £400 cashback
The key to maximising this in my opinion would be to go for the highest percentage cashback based on deposits which appears to be the lowest cashback amount (invest £30 x 12 = £360, of which £145 is 40%). This also uses a tiny amount of your ISA allowance and is the option I have gone for.
It’s worth noting that their investment fees are 1.5% so will not outweigh the cashback although as with all investing, your capital is at risk and you may receive back less than you invest.
You will probably need to stay invested for 12 months, but realistically as soon as your cashback has paid out you could probably close the account and withdraw your cash.
Create a Shepherds Friendly account through TopCashback
Invest £X per month based on your above choice
Withdraw your cashback once moved to “payable” & cancel your monthly direct debit
Withdraw your funds from Shepherds Friendly or transfer your ISA elsewhere (you may incur transfer fees)
Scottish Friendly - £30 to £410 cashback
This is very similar to the above but comes with a few caveats, you must not cancel the ISA within 12 months else they will deduct the cashback earned from your balance before allowing you to withdraw (keep reading for a trick on how to bypass this and their “early withdrawal fee of £50!”). Here’s the TopCashback page* (or search “Scottish Friendly My Ethical Select ISA”)* Or search the same term on Quidco for the same rates*
£10-£24.99 per month - get £30 cashback
£25-£49.99 per month - get £140 cashback
£50-£99.99 per month - get £165 cashback
£100-£499.99 per month - get £310 cashback
£500-£999.99 per month - get £350 cashback
£1,000+ per month - get £410 cashback
Again, we want to look at the “best value” option here and looking at it on a percentage basis the £25-£49.99 gives a better percentage of 47% cashback before fees (£25 x 12 = £300, of which £140 is 47%).
Now Scottish Friendly don’t like it if you clear out your account to a zero balance within 5 years and will charge you a £50 “early exit fee” although you could stomach this and still earn a good amount of cashback. Alternatively, you can withdraw everything but £50 from your account and then set yourself a reminder to withdraw this amount 5 years after your opening the account.