GoHenry gets kids investing as well as saving with a Junior Stocks and Shares ISA

GoHenry is a pocket money app that helps children learn about money by giving them the independence to make their own choices about what they spend their cash on. They also have a Junior Stocks and Shares ISA that lets you invest in your children’s future. Once you invest in a JISA the money is held in a tax-efficient account and can only be accessed by your child when they turn 18.

In this review we:

• Give our ratings based on their nearest peers
• Tell you what we think of them after testing them with real money on a live accounts
• Highlight the key costs, facts and figures of their accounts

GoHenry Junior ISA Expert Review

I got quite drunk at the City Am awards last night, and after Nick Ferrari told some amusing stories about Boris Johnson and made some Whatapps jokes and dinner had been cleared, I found myself aimlessly wandering around looking for someone to talk to. The same thing happens to me at conferences, it reminds me of nightclubs at university or Saturday night discos at school pretending to look for the loo. I really just wanted to go home, but before I did, I was delighted to see that Louise Hill, one of the founders of GoHenry, who won “Entrepreneur of the year”, was still at her table.

So I strolled on over, didn’t introduce myself, and started waffling about how GoHenry was one of the best apps in the world, anywhere ever. I’ve been chasing an interview with GoHenry for a while now, as it’s always nice to hear from the people who set up these game-changing apps to see what makes them tick.  Will Carmichael, who founded Rooster Money (before Natwest bought it), had some great stories about trying to predict the stock market based on what children spend their money on. Julian Robson from Beanstalk, also had some fascinating insight into why there is never a bad time to start investing, particularly the key advantage children have over adults when it comes to investing, that being time in the market, rather than timing the market.

Anyway, it was a brief encounter, and hopefully, we’ll nail them down for a proper chat at some point.

I’m glad I did though because GoHenry has genuinely changed our lives as parents. It would be hard to say that about most financial apps, becuase they are all basically just tools. But what GoHenry has done is made our lives cheaper and easier and that’s a big win.

We first started using GoHenry during lockdown, so that the children could earn money for doing chores, but that actually became a bit of a chore for us because if I’m completely honest the app itself is a bit slow, takes ages to log in and the UX is a bit tricky to navigate. So we fairly swiftly stopped allocating pocket money based on chores and now the children just get a regular £5 a week.

The issues with the app aren’t such a big deal because they never use it, but love their cards. Amazingly they always know where they are, and haven’t lost one yet. I’d say I login once a month, so I can cope.

But, more importantly, it’s revolutionised our children’s attitude to asking for things. Before GoHenry every time we went anywhere, ever, we would be pestered for tat in gift shops, sweets in the supermarket and pleads for things their friends have.

Sometimes we’d give in, and it would cost us a fortune. But now, if they want something, we just say, “of course, you can have it if you buy it yourself”. Which triggers children to think about whether or not they actually need something. Or, if they want it more than they want something else because unlike (in their eyes anyway) their parent’s unlimited supply of magic money, being able to see what they can afford and if they buy this they may not be able to buy something else, makes them think twice about what they want.

So it’s made our lives easier because we’re not asked to buy so many unnecessary things.

It’s also made our lives cheaper because even though it costs £2.99 a month and in percentage terms of their account balances that is massive, it’s worth every penny because we are certainly spending less than that overall. In fact, we hardly buy them anything, they do it themselves. 

GoHenry can even make you money, well not you, but your children. If you get them investing with a JISA.

The key advantage of investing in a Junior ISA for your children is that once the money is in, it’s in and you can’t take it out. In fact, only your child can withdraw it when they are 18, and all profits are tax-free. Some may argue (Justin Urquhart Stewart did when I interviewed him) that 18 is the worst possible time to give children any money because they are so irresponsible at that age, but then they must grow up and make their own mistakes.

The main disadvantage of course, is that stocks and shares ISA can go down in value, which ours actually have. But that’s fine because we’re not trading in the short term, that money will be locked away for a good few years in Vanguard’s LifeStrategy 60% fund, which is one of the cheapest and most diverse funds about. The 60% represents the fund’s exposure to main market stocks, which generally go up. The 40% is in bonds, which generate steady income.

What’s also good about the Junior ISA is that if our children want anything ridiculous, we can force them to invest. For example, my daughter has been begging for a pair of Air Jordans which we’ve always said no to because they are over £100 and it’s insane for an eleven-year-old to have shoes that expensive. So what we actually did was buy her a second-hand pair on eBay as a treat for dealing with the stress of finding out from Surrey Country Council what school she has been allocated. However, even though we bought them, we deducted the £69.74 from her pocket money and transferred it to her JISA.

Because, whilst your children will grow out of shoes, what you really want to see grow is their financial independence so they have enough money to travel the world on their gap year.

Next steps:

• Visit GoHenry
• Compare junior stocks and shares ISAs
• See the best JISA bonus offers