All The Details

𝟭. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 “𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁” 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁

To use this for your day-to-day spending and get 1.5% cashback, you’ll need to get one of Trading 212’s debit cards – You can get an online one for free instantly, and you also have the option of ordering a physical debit card for a one-off fee of £4.95.

You can earn up to £20 cashback each month – Meaning you could spend £1,333 each month before the cashback limit is reached – Which should be more than ample for most people’s grocery shopping!

Not all retailers are valid for cashback – A few types of retailers are excluded, and it’s important to be mindful of these – A full list can be found here:
https://helpcentre.trading212.com/hc/en-us/articles/17862038991389-Excluded-merchants-for-cashback

The 1.5% cashback is available until 1st October – It will drop to 0.5% thereafter.

You can also choose to get 5.2% interest on the cash you hold in the “Invest” account, but this does come with a very low risk of loss, as your cash would not be covered by the FSCS if the fund that Trading 212 invests your cash into were to fail. However, you can avoid this risk if you want by simply not opting to earn the interest in this account.

The 5.2% interest is variable, so is likely to get reduced when bank rates start coming down. Finally, as the name “Invest” implies, you can also use this account for investing. However, I’d suggest to do your investing inside the Stocks ISA where possible, as it is much more tax efficient. That said though, the government does give you some small tax allowances that you can use outside of an ISA, and there are a few investments available in the Invest account that are not available in the Stocks ISA (eg. PDD and ARM), so the Invest account can still be useful for actual investing.


𝟮. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 “𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗰𝗸𝘀 𝗜𝗦𝗔” 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁

This is a stocks & shares ISA where you can tax-efficiently do any long-term investing.

The government gives you a £20,000 limit on ISA deposits each tax year. This limit is shared between the two ISA’s, as well as any other cash ISA’s or stocks & shares ISA’s that you might deposit into with other providers – Note here that there used to be a rule on only opening one ISA of each type in each tax year, but that limitation doesn’t exist anymore!

In terms of what to invest in, you have a very wide selection of funds (“ETF’s”) and individual stocks to choose from. As you gain confidence with investing, it can be great fun to explore these – Making sure to diversify your investments, and keeping your individual stock picks to companies with strong financials. There are ETF’s for different markets, different sectors, and even different asset classes. And the range of individual stocks is vast, including loads of big names like Tesla, Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple. Loads of information about each of the investments is also provided for you in the platform.

However, if you just want to get started investing and keep things as simple as possible, you could just invest in an All-World tracker ETF – There are a few different ones available, but my favourite is the “Invesco FTSE All-World” ETF, ticker FWRG, as I believe it has the lowest ongoing charge at only 0.15%. Since the ETF started nearly a year ago, it has had a return of about 19%, at the time of writing – Some years will be up and some will be down, but you could probably expect an average return of around 9% per year (not adjusted for inflation), based on past performance of other all-world funds.

Because of the heightened risk of losing money in the short-term, I’d suggest only investing money that you are not going to need for at least 5 to 10 years.

Like the Invest account, you can also opt-in to 5.2% (variable) interest on your un-invested cash in the Stocks ISA, if you are happy to accept the very low risk of loss.


𝟯. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 “𝗖𝗮𝘀𝗵 𝗜𝗦𝗔” 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁

This is the place to put your spare cash that you might need within the next few years.

This account is really simple: It just offers 5.2% (variable) interest on your cash, except that it’s much better: Not only is the interest tax-free, but the cash is also fully protected by the FSCS, all the way up to their limit of £85,000 – So you don’t have to worry about that low risk of loss that comes with earning interest in the other accounts.

Remember, the £20,000 annual ISA deposit limit is shared between this account and the Stocks ISA (and any other stocks & shares or cash ISA’s that you have) – But as both accounts are flexible, you can move cash between them without affecting your limit.

So this is the place where I would put any savings that you might wish to use within the next few years.


4. The “CFD” account

Wait, what? There’s another one? – Yes there is, but this should only be used by sophisticated traders – If you are a beginner, or if you are only interested in long-term investing, you should just ignore this account.