YouTube video (personal channel) advising UK investors on choosing the best Stocks & Shares ISA for 2025. The speaker explains the tax advantage of ISAs using a numerical example (two investors, Ian with an ISA vs Dave without) and claims the ISA could save about £230k–£236k over a career; he compares DIY investing vs using a financial advisor and discusses provider choices (Hargreaves Lansdown, Trading 212, Fidelity, InvestEngine, iWeb). The video also includes the speaker’s personal plan to open an ISA with £10k and contribute £500/month and invites viewers to follow his journey.
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A stocks and shares ISA could save a typical UK investor over £230,000. But with so many options out there, you still need to pick the right one. So in this video, I'm going to be sharing the best ISAs for 2025. And this is all based on my personal experience. Before we go any further, I'm now managing my money in the same way that you guys are. Having spent over a decade in the markets as a pro and building a seven figure portfolio in the process, that allowed me to quit the rat race and travel the world in my 30s. Before we get into it, why even bother investing in an isa? To explain this, let's imagine two investors, we'll call them Ian who has an isa, and Dave, who doesn't. They're both going to invest a lump sum of 10,000 pounds, contributing 500 pounds each month at a return of 7.4% after inflation. So beginning at 30, they have 37 years until the current retirement age of 67. The big difference comes at the bottom. But for Dave, who is not using an ISA, that's going to end up costing him £236,000. We're not talking about maxing out the 20 grand a year allowance here, guys. This is £6,000 a year we're paying in. So in terms of the tax breakdown, you've got two components here, stamp duty and capital gains tax. If you're trading shares UK shares, then you're going to be taxed at 0.5% on purchase, but not inside of an ISA, which pales in comparison to the capital gains tax bill that is going to face 230 grand. For the sake of opening a stocks and shares ISA with one of the providers that I'll get onto in just a minute. So the net result is that Ian at retirement would come away with nearly £1.2 million in real terms just by contributing £500amonth, starting with 10 grand at 30 compared to 936 grand in, in Dave's case, which might not sound too bad on the face of it, but in order to have a comfortable standard of living in retirement, you need to budget about 43 grand a year. Now, Dave isn't going to have enough for that. Now that we understand the situation, let's get on to the providers. So we'll assume here that Dave's now wised up and he's opened the nicer, just like Ian. But he invests in funds via his financial advisor, whereas Ian is doing it on a DIY basis. The fees are going to add up to nearly 400 grand for Dave inside of his ISA. Ian of course is doing it himself. So he doesn't face those, but he doesn't get away scot free. Even as a DIY investor inside of an isa, he's going to face a platform fee as well as a very modest, typically modest ETF fee. Even half a percent over those years is going to compound against you nearly 150 grand in Ian's case. He comes away now with about a million quid compared to £1.2 million. So he could fall just shy of even that modest retirement living standard. But Dave's nowhere near. So what we've learned so far, just to recap, an ISA could save a typical investor over 200 grand. An advisor could cost you hundreds of thousands more. And DIY investors could still end up paying almost 150 grand in fees based on average contributions and costs. So let's address the 150,000 pound opportunity here by picking the best ISA providers. Hargreaves, Lansdowne. I've used them for years, everything under one roof, basically a one stop shop. Whether it's SIPs, active savings and they've even got things like Junior ISAs. They're a trusted, reliable service in some ways. Maybe they're a legacy provider. They, they haven't modified and adapted and continued to compete. These guys still charge you about £12 when you buy and £12 again when you sell. They're also charging a platform fee. So the example that we looked at a moment ago is using Hargreeves platform fee of 0.45% I believe it is. If you have to deal over the telephone, there's an additional fee as well. The fees and the other things that I'm about to go into now are the reason that I've just recently moved across to Training 212. A provider that doesn't charge annual fees offers 0 commission share dealing, not only on ETFs, but on single stocks as well, which for me as a single stock lover is obviously like the dream, but also things like fractional share dealing. If you're paying in £500amonth, for example, but you need to Split that across 20 stocks, you might find that that little piece is too small to own. I don't know, shares in Apple for example, which you could otherwise buy with only a tenner, that makes it a lot more approachable for people, particularly for your ongoing or regular contributions each month. The other thing that they have are these so called pies. You can create your own portfolio that you can automatically invest into passively each month without having to go in and manually adjust anything and figure out, okay, I need to split this amount of money across these shares. The prices have moved around. The other cool thing is that you can get a free share worth up to £100 if you deposit even just a pound. I personally found the account opening process to be really smooth, but I have heard from other people online that they have faced some issues with identity checks. Basically, the onboarding, the KYC process, I don't think that's unique to trend 212. I've seen it all over the shop. The thing that I did experience personally, a couple of companies that I own in my other accounts didn't have the primary listing. The adr, the American Depository Receipt with it being dual listed, was available. But I'd far rather own the listing on the primary exchange than I would an adr. So. So there are of course other providers out there, whether it's the likes of fidelity. InvestEngine is another. I think iWeb is one that also gets banded around. But as you guys know, I love picking stocks. I spent my career doing it. It's my passion for me. The likes of Fidelity, they're a big ETF provider. I couldn't do single stocks there. And it's the same case with Investengine. Even though from what I hear, they're very competitive when it comes to fees. They restrict you to doing only ETFs. So if that's your thing, if you're happy with that, then fair enough. I can tell you, as a guy who did fairly well for himself by always focusing on single stocks, you're leaving a lot on the table potentially. Okay, so that's all well and good, James, but I don't know what to buy. Well, allow me to get the professional specs on here for a minute. I've just opened an account with them. I'm starting again with 10k in an ISA, paying in £500amonth from here. So using the exact same assumptions and scenario that we've just looked at. And I hope that you can learn with me as I go along. So join me for the journey if you want to see how I'm applying the same strategy that I applied to grow my sip, my much bigger account with Hargus Lansdowne. There's a link in the description. If you send me a message, I'll send that over to you. If you've enjoyed this, check out this next video, which I think you're going to love.
