Personal Finance & Money Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people who want to be financially literate. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I'm fully employed as a software developer but if I lose my job, would the money in a Lifetime ISA put me over the threshold to receive benefits and have my national insurance contributions covered?
I have Asperger's, I'm dyslexic and I also think I do things slowly even if I can do and understand complex work. Being realistic, I'm still more at risk than most people and I need to account for that risk.
Yes, it can. See the guidance here.
If you need to claim certain state benefits your LISA savings will normally be taken into account. If you have sufficient savings in your LISA you may not be eligible to receive state benefits.
This can potentially put you in a tricky situation, since while the LISA savings can stop you getting benefits, you can’t actually access them until you’re 60 (except to buy a house, or in some special circumstances that are unlikely to apply to you). A personal pension might be a better bet, because that’s not taken into account for benefit claims, and can also survive bankruptcy.
I don’t think anyone here can answer that directly as the details of your personal circumstances can massively affect which benefits you are entitled to. However, in general, yes, savings accounts are taken into consideration when assessing benefits eligibility.
Your best bet would be to use one of the (free, anonymous) benefits calculators linked from here: https://www.gov.uk/benefits-calculators and try out a variety of hypothetical situations to see how you would be affected.
