Should I move £4k into my LISA at start of end of new tax year?

[savingforahouse123]

I plan to buy my first home and I have pretty good savings (below). I recently quit my job due to it affecting my mental health and on the verge of a career change where my salary will drop significantly to £21.5k. My finances are below:

Moneybox S&S Lifetime ISA. £20,525
HSBC Help To Buy ISA (that I use as a savings account). 1% AER. £11,643 (generates about £8.61 interest per month)
Goldman Sachs Marcus account. 0.7% AER/Gross. £54,410 (generates about £28 interest per month)
Virgin Money M Plus Current. 2% up to £4k. £4,000 (generates about £6.8 interest per month)
TOTAL: £90,577.75
Total yearly interest: £521

I then have £8.5k in crypto. I also have £2.6k in stocks. So I have about £100k in total.

Every tax year I pay in £4k into my S&S LISA for the £1k bonus but I'm wondering whether I'd be better doing this at the start of the tax year and benefiting from a year of stocks compounding (they say it's better to get in early) or at the end of the tax year and make the most of all of the interest I'm getting on my large savings? What do you think?

On a side note, based on the above finances and salary, would opening a Cash ISA benefit me?

[monabri]

Cash ISA
If you put your savings in a non-ISA'ed account you can earn £1000 per year in interest before you have to pay any tax. I don't know what the best savings rate is in a normal non ISA account (1%...let's assume). So, you would need to deposit savings of £100k in cash to earn interest of £1k. I would be focusing on which account offers the best interest rate and you might find it is not the ISA account! You should have savings to hand for emergencies ( job loss , car repair). Another thing to ponder on is that if you don't use your ISA allowance you lose it! At some later point in life, you might wish to transfer cash accumulated in an ISA account to a S&S ISA account such that any dividends received are tax free.

Timing
You are buying shares in your S&S LISA. The best time to buy them is when shareprices are depressed as you get " more for your money ". You cannot guarantee that shares will " compound up" in value . I believe the usual recommendation is to drip feed money in monthly. It is more important to understand what you are investing in and what the charges are that reduce any hoped for future profit.

[monabri]

Crypto....how do I use that to pay a house deposit? Personally, I wouldn't go anywhere near crypto.

[Urbandreamer]

Crypto....how do I use that to pay a house deposit? Personally, I wouldn't go anywhere near crypto.

I suspect that most with savings in a different currency would exchange that to the currency needed.

That said Peter McCormack, who is not unknown in the bitcoin community, apparently is buying a house with the biggest loan to book that he can. He expects the VALUE of fiat currency to fall and the value of bitcoin to rise.

Ignoring crypto, a lump sum into equities around the start or end of the tax year is not a great idea. It's usually far better to either spread the investment or to invest nearer the end of summer.

[savingforahouse123]

Cash ISA
If you put your savings in a non-ISA'ed account you can earn £1000 per year in interest before you have to pay any tax. I don't know what the best savings rate is in a normal non ISA account (1%...let's assume). So, you would need to deposit savings of £100k in cash to earn interest of £1k. I would be focusing on which account offers the best interest rate and you might find it is not the ISA account! You should have savings to hand for emergencies ( job loss , car repair). Another thing to ponder on is that if you don't use your ISA allowance you lose it! At some later point in life, you might wish to transfer cash accumulated in an ISA account to a S&S ISA account such that any dividends received are tax free.

Timing
You are buying shares in your S&S LISA. The best time to buy them is when shareprices are depressed as you get " more for your money ". You cannot guarantee that shares will " compound up" in value . I believe the usual recommendation is to drip feed money in monthly. It is more important to understand what you are investing in and what the charges are that reduce any hoped for future profit.

Thank you. For your first paragraph, I believe I'm under the threshold for being taxed on my interest so for now I don't think I need to worry about a Cash ISA unless it pays better interest than bank/savings accounts.