Beware the ISA rip-off

The ‘financial advisor’ at my bank tried to convince me to put some money into ISAs last week. He made great play of the 20% tax savings I would make from an ISA. So I asked why the interest rates on ISAs are at least 30% lower than the interest paid on normal one- or two-year savings, resulting in the supposed ‘tax savings’ being more than wiped out by the low ISA interest rates giving the banks an obscenely healthy profit at savers’ expense.

The financial advisor laughed and admitted that ISAs were a complete rip-off, but that most of the bank’s customers were too stupid to realise this.