"The secrets of the ISA millionaires"

[kempiejon]

My secret to a large ISA was to buy shares in JD sports in 2011, and then through sheer indecisiveness and laziness, I failed to sell most of them them at lots of points where I thought maybe I should. Idleness doesn't always work, but it's a common factor in my big winners (in amongst the big losers of course. We all have those).

Ah but one's worst failures only lost a maximum of 100% whereas the biggest gains can be many more times that.

[Adamski]

My Dad invested in PEPs since 1986, saved up a large sum, split across accounts and brokers, but wasn't an ISA millionaire, however didn't live long enough in retirement to enjoy it. As others have said, can't go much wrong if stay invested in the market for 30+ years, but remind myself have to enjoy your life as well as can't say what's round the corner.

[SalvorHardin]

I'm not far off, though I would never appear on any such list because I have four different ISA providers to diversify the provider risk.

Unfortunately for several years (2005-09) my main ISA performed quite badly. This ISA was stuffed with highly speculative oil and property companies to take advantage of the capital gains tax exemption.

During the same period, my big successes were held outside my ISA (this included several oil and property companies). For a few months it got to the stage where I became reluctant to buy anything in this ISA because doing so would jinx it

[hiriskpaul]

One other thing that struck me about the ISA/world tracker investment history was how well it illustrated Buffett's famous remark "Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful". Unsurprisingly, April 2000 turned out not to be a great time to open an ISA, compared to surrounding years, but April 2003 and April 2009 were really good times. Even so, the CAGR on the April 2000 ISA was about 6.3% to the end of Jan 2021. So even if for this duff year, time in the market still eventually delivered an ok return.

[SoBo65]

Majority of my ISA's are conservatively invested, but one ISA which was the smallest at one time is 100% investment in Scottish Mortgage and has seen spectacular growth to be worth over £200k, if I had invested all ISA's/PEP's on same basis would likely be multi millionaire, but I am not bitter....

[Lootman]

Unfortunately for several years (2005-09) my main ISA performed quite badly. This ISA was stuffed with highly speculative oil and property companies to take advantage of the capital gains tax exemption.

During the same period, my big successes were held outside my ISA (this included several oil and property companies). For a few months it got to the stage where I became reluctant to buy anything in this ISA because doing so would jinx it

Like you I had the misfortune to make my best investments in my taxable account. I made the mistake of putting less growthy income-type securities in my ISA and they have not grown well. So I let the tax tail wag the investment dog, in that regard.

So I think you were right to try and shelter capital gains rather than income in an ISA. The CGT saving becomes the bigger benefit once you have a decent-sized pot. I guess in your case the problem was that the speculative names misfired, which of course is always a risk. A realised loss in an ISA is useless for CGT mitigation and I have never figured out a way around that.

[1nvest]

I strongly suspect that there are many more out there. These articles will miss all the investors with more than one ISA. And on the whole I would expect the more your assets the more likely you are to have shared them about.

While I fall well short of the target I have multiple ISA's so won't show up on these lists ever, even if I'm spectacularly succesful!

Yes, I'm amazed HL only have 579. I'm there and my wife very nearly is, and that is after some disasters too!

For HMG it is a good ploy to get us oldies to build up IHT'able assets and then clobber our estates. It's worked with us

SIPP's are (generally) tax free on the way in, taxable on the way out. Can be IHT efficient in that if you die before 75 beneficiaries do not pay IHT.
ISA's are (again generally) contributions out of taxed, not taxed on the way out. ISA's are IHT liable.
Seems like predominately there would be a preference to build up SIPP's first.
I suspect that a proportion of ISA million+ are a consequence of migration of SIPP holdings into ISA holdings, so neither taxed on the way in, or on the way out (but at risk of IHT taxation).

[Dod101]

SIPP's are (generally) tax free on the way in, taxable on the way out. Can be IHT efficient in that if you die before 75 beneficiaries do not pay IHT.

And what is more the beneficiary can extract funds from it without paying any tax, even in
life.

Dod