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I opened mine the week the consultation was announced, honestly, because nothing about the announcement changes the current rules the 25% government bonus, the £450,000 property cap and existing eligibility all still
apply exactly as before until the new product actually launches. If you’re eligible now and planning to buy a home within the next couple of years, there’s no reason to wait for a product that isn’t even confirmed to launch before April 2028
I withdrew from my LISA for an emergency a few years back and lost a genuinely painful chunk of my own savings to the 25% penalty, not just the government bonus… people underestimate that the charge applies to your whole
withdrawal, not just the free money. That’s exactly the flaw this reform is meant to fix, since the proposed new ISA is designed to drop withdrawal penalties on your own contributions entirely. If the new product delivers on that promise, it’ll be a genuine improvement over what a lot of us went through
I’ve followed the Martin Lewis campaign on this closely, and one detail worth flagging is that the age cap for the new product is being proposed as no upper limit, compared to the current LISA’s hard cutoff at 40 for opening a
new account. That alone could open this kind of support to a much wider group of aspiring first time buyers who are currently locked out simply for being a bit older, which strikes me as a genuinely positive, overdue change if it goes through as proposed
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Should I still bother opening a LISA now?