If you want to retire a millionaire and make the most of your advanced years, I’d choose a Stocks and Shares ISA over alternatives such as buy-to-let, every time.
Investing via an ISA has many advantages. Once you’ve set up an online platform, you can buy and sell shares in seconds. Even better, all your returns are completely free of income tax and capital gains tax, for life. The costs are minimal. You cannot say any of this about buy-to-let.
Investing in a buy-to-let property is a hard way to fund a millionaire retirement, and the Covid-19 crisis has only made it worse. There are growing reports of landlords struggling to fill empty properties due to the lockdown. Others are struggling to collect the rent, because tenants have lost their job, or been furloughed.
Who wants to retire a millionaire?
Landlords will be extending payment holidays to many, rightly so, but that’s three months without income. And what if tenants still cannot pay the rent after that? Then you face the kind of heart-breaking decision you’ll never face if you invest in a Stocks and Shares ISA.
Buying and selling property is also effortful, and you face punitive tax charges at every turn. These include a 3% stamp duty surcharge on purchases, while higher rate tax relief on mortgage interest payments has been scrapped. This makes it harder to earn enough money to retire a millionaire.
As I said, there’s no tax to pay at any point in a Stocks and Shares ISA. At least until you die. Even then, you can pass them tax-free to a spouse or civil partner.
Another attraction is that, unlike property, shares are liquid. Property takes months to buy and sell, shares take seconds. This means you can seize opportunities like the current stock market crash to load up your portfolio and retire early.
Thousands have already become tax-free millionaires by investing in stocks and shares through an ISA. With the allowance now lifted to £20,000 a year, their numbers will only grow.
I’d load up by a Stocks and Shares ISA
The stock market crash is a great opportunity to load up your ISA portfolio with bargain FTSE 100 stocks. There are plenty of top companies going cheap right now. Better still, you can buy them online, without breaking any social distancing rules.
Naturally, you won’t become an ISA millionaire overnight. You should aim to invest as much as you can afford each year, then hold on for the long-term. It’ll take a few decades, but you should get there if you stick with it.
A Stocks and Shares ISA is the best way I know to make a million from investing. It’s certainly easier than buy-to-let.
