Many grandparents are keen to invest in their grandchildren’s future. By exploring options such as Junior ISAs, property ownership and estate planning, grandparents can provide a solid financial foundation for the next generation.

Understanding your grandchildren’s needs and goals

Engaging in open conversations about your grandkid’s aspirations is a good starting point, whether with them directly or with their parents. These might relate to education, homeownership or starting a business.

Either way, this means your support aligns with their ambitions. It will help you tailor your strategies to aid their future success.

Education savings

Starting early with education savings offers major advantages, mainly through the power of compound interest. This helps funds grow steadily over time, easing future financial pressures. It also provides more flexibility, reducing the need for larger contributions later.

There are several options available:

• Junior ISAs: Tax-free savings accounts for children, with the potential for high returns over time.
• Child Trust Funds: Government-backed accounts with similar tax benefits, though these are now only available for children born between 2002 and 2011.
• Savings accounts: More flexible but typically offer lower interest rates, suitable for short-term needs.

Read more: Could spoiling the grandkids be damaging their health?

Investing in property

Property investment offers strong potential as a long-term asset due to capital appreciation and rental income.

For grandparents, buying a home for their grandchildren to live in during university or early adulthood provides both housing stability and asset growth. Investing in a newly built home could be worthwhile due to their modern, energy-efficient designs, which can drive capital appreciation. Alternatively, a buy-to-let property can generate rental income, helping cover mortgage costs while building equity.

Long-term savings and investments

Long-term investing is key to building financial security, allowing investments to grow and benefit from compound returns over time. A balanced investment approach, tailored to risk tolerance and goals, can build wealth and ensure stability for the future. It also mitigates short-term market fluctuations.

Key options include:

• Stocks: Higher risk but potential for significant growth.
• Bonds: Lower risk, offering steady income through interest payments.
• Funds: Pooled investments in stocks or bonds, providing diversification and professional management.

Estate planning

Estate planning is essential to protect assets and ensure they are passed on to grandchildren as intended. You should consider:

• Wills: Legal documents that specify asset distribution after death, ensuring your wishes are followed.
• Trusts: These can safeguard assets, manage taxes and control when and how beneficiaries receive their inheritance.
• Other tools: Power of attorney and living wills protect assets during your lifetime by appointing trusted individuals to manage financial or medical decisions.

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Make 2024 your best financial year yet by reading our top tips on how to boost your finances in the new year.

What are financial goals?

Your financial goals are incredibly personal and dependent on your current circumstances. Your financial resolutions are likely determined by your ambitions, commitments, and long-term objectives.

Financial goals can be as small or large as you wish. Perhaps you’re hoping to pay off a loan, or you’re simply saving up for a new mobile phone. Whatever your goals, there are certainly ways to achieve them.

Clearing debts

Paying off debts is key to feeling financially stable. Owing money and being in debt is incredibly stressful, but unfortunately, it’s a common occurrence that happens to many of us.

If your main goal is to clear your debts, you first need to identify and prioritise these debts. Consider paying off the debt that incurs the highest interest first, as this will cost you the most money.

If you’re struggling with your finances, you can seek support and guidance to ensure you know how best to cope and manage your money. You may find yourself in a difficult situation, but rest assured that you’re not alone.

Investment

If you’re hoping to boost your finances, you could consider venturing into the world of investing. Investing early means you have plenty of time and potential to reap long-term rewards. Time is incredibly powerful for investors – the more time your money has the opportunity to grow, the better.

Opting for a trading platform with a range of options for trading and investments could be the best place to start. There are so many areas to invest in, including stocks, mutual funds, bonds, and high-yield savings accounts.

Freelancing

Freelancing has become incredibly popular. The rise of the side hustle has encouraged people to start their own business and become their own boss. While it can take time and hard work, freelancing certainly has its benefits.

If you want to start freelancing, consider turning one of your passions into a business. Whether you want to become a web designer, photographer, digital marketer, or event planner, the world is your oyster.

Make the most of your savings

Perhaps 2024 is the year you want to save more. You could start building up that emergency fund you’ve always spoken about. The best way to get started is by drawing up a budget and identifying where money is coming in and going out.

That way, you can work out where you can cut back to ensure you can put aside money for your emergency savings each month. You’ll be sure to thank yourself in the long run, especially on a rainy day!

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We all want a comfortable, happy retirement, but recent figures from the Centre for Ageing Better shows that a quarter of people approaching retirement – five million people in all – may not have the income they require. Are you one of those finding it hard to think about money for your retirement?

It’s never too late. To aim for the right sort of money needed to retire, here are a few helpful nudges.

Start saving as early as possible

Some of us know what we want to do in our retirements, some of us don’t. But it’s important we still put money away so that there are funds there ready for when we do. Starting pension saving is best done as young as possible so your funds can take advantage of the power of compounding. This means that over time, your funds accrue interest. Which then grows the pot, which then earns more interest, and so forth.

According to MoneySavingExpert, a good rule of thumb here is to take the age you start saving for a pension and halve that number. Now save that number as a percentage of your pre-tax salary until you retire. So if you’re 50, you should be looking at saving 25% until you hang up your hat.

Read more: Are you prepared for how retirement is going to affect your mental health?

Plan your retirement needs

Everyone’s retirement costs are different. Some people will want an income that lets them continue their salaried lifestyle. Some want more holidays, or to be able to give regular gifts to their children and grandchildren. While others may be happy with a more relaxed and modest lifestyle.

To work out how much you might need for your retirement, and to tot up exactly how much you’ll need to put away each month to get there, use MoneyHelper’s free pension calculator.

Save and invest

Whether you choose to invest your pension via a stocks and shares ISA, pension fund, self-invested personal pension (SIPP) or cash ISA, it can be a great idea to compare the options on offer.

As well as finding the best accounts out there, when investing it’s a similarly great idea to diversify your portfolio so it’s not open to single-company or single-industry shocks. And as you approach retirement, putting your investments into less risky assets like bonds will protect your money as retirement approaches. Working with a financial advisor can be a good idea here.

Deal with those debts

High-interest debts from things like credit cards, personal loans, and so forth ideally need to be paid off before you retire. They can eat into your retirement savings quickly. This can reduce your quality of life and all the hard work you’ll have put into saving.

As such, try and divert money towards paying off these debts long before you retire, and seriously consider whether you want the burden of debt during and after you’re approaching retirement.

Growing and protecting your retirement funds is something everyone should do so they can enjoy a healthy, happy retirement doing the things they love most. What do you think is important when retirement planning? Let us know your comments below.

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I didn’t think I’d be the sort of person to explore how to get into crypto. I’d heard a bit about it but had never been attracted.

Some years ago, a mate of mine called Daz told me to buy Bitcoin. To give this some framework, Daz is a serial agitator and social disruptor, with a background in challenging ‘The Man’ and seeking alternative lifestyles.

He explained how it was digital, and wasn’t 3D like the tenner in my pocket. It was created by a mysterious figure called Satoshi Nakamoto whom nobody knew, and it was going to disrupt the standardised currencies of the world. He talked about blockchains and wallets and I sort of understood it. “Anarchic,” I thought.

Some of this sounded attractive. Some of it sounded like nonsense. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe Daz, it just sounded vague, I wasn’t really interested. At the time, one bitcoin was under a dollar. Jump forward to April 2021 and Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $63,707.34. If I’d invested even a hundred quid then, I’d have been sitting on nearly half a million at that point – around £460,000.

That’s a pretty good yield for a ten-year investment, at such a low stake. But this is an extreme example, and Bitcoin has been through many ups and downs during that time. Summer 2021 saw it drop down to around the $31,000 mark. But understandably I find myself wishing I’d taken a leap of faith. Sorry Daz, you did tell me.

OK crypto, let’s have a look then…

Fast forward to 2020 and the pandemic, and I found myself with a sudden interest in investing money. I figured airline shares were crashing, but would rise again, maybe a good punt. So I rang another mate of mine, Steve, a futures broker. What did he think? Should I buy into Easyjet? Their shares were through the floor.

He had a look and advised wait a bit, it would go lower. We talked about how I could buy some shares, and how it all worked. He was really helpful, giving me calm and measured advice. This is a man who has traded and made millions for his clients, I trusted him implicitly. So what did I do next?

I bought Dogecoin.

Steve called. “So, you’ve essentially gone through the process of looking at a fairly sensible investment with a safe yield, to buying a shitcoin with no development team and no utility options?”

I still don’t know why I made that decision. Perhaps because it was so cheap. Definitely because the memes on Twitter about it were hilarious. Partly because I’d seen Elon Musk shilling it. And I liked the idea – it was fun. So I bought a ton of it at $0.03, and joined the #DogeArmy.

Steve called. “So, you’ve essentially gone through the process of looking at a fairly sensible investment with a safe yield, to buying a shitcoin with no development team and no utility options?” he asked. I had to admit that yes, that was exactly what I’d done.

But I didn’t care; I was having a ball. Dogecoin was rising, and I figured I’d invested so little, so I didn’t care. It was keeping me amused, spending hours on Twitter laughing at Doge memes and watching my wallet grow (glossary of crypto terms at the bottom). I was also amused at how irritated the Bitcoin maxis were getting. One Bitcoiner I know posted in a chat group, “why won’t Doge just go away?!!” I’m afraid I chuckled.

Dogecoin continued to rise, so in a fit of being sensible, I bought into Bitcoin, using my Doge profits. And then some Ether because hey why not. And when Dogecoin hit around the $0.70 mark I had some kind of God-given flash of insight and sold enough to pay off my original stake. The timing was perfect – it’s dropped steadily since then, and currently sits at around $0.19 mark. Basically now I am playing with house money across the board. I can tell you, it makes the game a lot less stressful.

Shitcoins can ruin lives… really fast

Not everyone has been lucky like me. Many bought into Doge when it was close to its ATH, buying in at $0.69, thinking it would go ‘to the moon’, and then watching their money disappear. Many have lost a great deal. And not just on Doge – on all sorts of shitcoins. The scams are myriad.

So this brings me to the point of crypto. A lot of where the heart of this lies is in its usage. Are you buying crypto because you want to decentralise finance and take the power away from banks and the old boys club? Or are you buying it as an investment, like you would buy gold, or stocks?

Are you buying crypto because you want to decentralise finance… Or are you buying it as an investment?

The original Bitcoiners didn’t set up to be a commodity. The idea was to take away the power, to have a currency that people could use to buy things, tip each other, purchase stuff… really stick it to The Man. The way all cryptocurrencies work is that ‘nobody’ is in charge. Anyone can mine coins, with the right kit, and anyone can work on development; nobody runs the game. But increasingly that’s not how it all feels to me.

I’m no expert, so this is all just my opinion, but it seems to me that Bitcoin is leaning towards acting like the very thing it railed against. Bitcoin maxis are consistently aggravated by altcoins taking over some of their market capital. They see Bitcoin and its finite supply as the future of de-fi, and for a currency that’s supposed to not be centralised, it really does kinda feel like they want to be front and centre. And just like fiat, there is a small number of people who own a very large proportion of the currency in circulation. It’s also very male oriented. So how is this different to banks and fiat billionaires?

At the time of writing, Bitcoin has just been adopted by El Salvador as a legal tender, to mixed reception, and it looks like Paraguay is going the same way. Poorer countries are seeing Bitcoin as a way of escaping the dominance of the dollar and build themselves some independence. But it’s clear not everyone in El Salvador is happy – the need for internet access and a device to actually use Bitcoin prevents many of them being able to use the currency, so mass adoption still has some way to go.

Have you planned financially for your death?

So is it worth throwing everything at Bitcoin?

This is a hard question, which goes back to the ‘why you are in it’ consideration. Bitcoin maxis would say yes, of course. And there’s an elegance in just stacking sats, as they call it, and watching it grow. Bitcoin is by far the most stable cryptocurrency – you are far less likely to lose your investment.

But if you’re in there for the fun of it too, like me, then dabbling with other coins can be attractive. I’ve got lucky a couple of times, buying low and selling high, but it takes time, watching and checking the markets. I’m increasingly falling into a more hands-off pattern. I hold Bitcoin, Ether and a few other bits and bobs, but I’m done with the dicking about. I got lucky, I’m not going to push it. I’m just glad the money I have tied up in my portfolio isn’t something I’m relying on, or risking.

Other factors

There is SO MUCH I’m not including in this article about Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency world, and how it all works, and what FUD does, and what the four phases of investment mean and so on. But I’ve only so much space here. I think another article might have to happen.

But I’m not a crypto millionaire. In fact, aside from cleverly selling my Doge at its ATH my crypto wallet is noodling along okay, but I’m not rich out of it. I’m a classic noob – I’ve made mistakes. But I didn’t panic sell, and what goes down, generally comes back up again. So it’s important to have ‘diamond hands’ and some patience!

Anyway, the biggest bit of advice I have for anyone thinking of getting involved is only to invest what you can afford, and do your own research. And hopefully we can all go to the moon some day. I just don’t know if it will be Bitcoin that takes us.

 @SamHL

Say what?!

Bitcoin maxi (maximalist) – a coiner who believes only Bitcoin is valid
Shitcoin – coins with little stability, likely to pump and burn fast
Altcoins – alternatives to maincoin (Bitcoin) that are a bit more serious
Fiat – ‘normal’ government-issue money
De-Fi – decentralised finance
Dogecoin – a shitcoin based on the Doge meme, originally created to mock the crypto world
ATH – all time high
Sats – short for Satoshi, the smallest denomination of Bitcoin – 1 sat = 0.00000001 BTC
Noob – a person new to the game
Whale – a person or body (such as a trading platform) who holds a huge amount of coin
FUD – fear, uncertainty, doubt
Diamond hands – when you steel yourself and hold your coins and don’t panic sell

Sam Harrington-Lowe

Sam is Silver’s founder and editor-in-chief. She’s largely responsible for organising all the things, but still finds time to do the odd bit of writing. Not enough though. Send help.

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