Why save for children when you could save for yourself?

I spent a good part of the Easter weekend grappling with the practical ramifications of new rules intended to improve people's financial outcomes.

I spent ages on the telephone to helplines and scoured Google to work out whether I'll be better off sticking with what I've got or embracing the new regime.

No, I wasn't trying to get my hands on my pension cash (I'm a bit too young for that). I was trying to sort out my children's finances. The changes to the pension regime - the most significant in a generation - have rightly dominated headlines lately. But from this week, child trust funds can finally be transferred to Junior Isas.

My story is fairly typical. My younger daughter was born in 2003 and therefore eligible for the child trust fund.

A voucher for £250 duly dropped on to the doormat and off we went to find a home for the cash.

It was immediately apparent that the range of products was narrow and that many providers were having a laugh with the pricing. I couldn't stand the thought of paying 1.5 per cent for a bog-standard tracker fund and so found myself opting for a reassuringly venerable investment trust.

But there was a problem, in the shape of an older sibling. Even back then, I could envision having to explain to a stroppy 18-year-old why her kid sister had a government-sponsored nest-egg and she did not. I concluded it was a situation best avoided.

The elder Miss Eley was not eligible for a CTF, having been born two years earlier, but could invest in the same fund under a "bare trust" arrangement. With a bare trust, the child is the beneficiary and gets the money at 18. Income and capital gains are taxed according to the beneficiary's circumstances, except if the income is generated from money contributed by parents.

I arranged for our child benefit to be split equally between the two accounts and congratulated myself on the admirably equal treatment of the children: both saw the same amounts invested into the same vehicle, and get the proceeds at the same age.

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Transferring is not exactly a doddle. I have to create the Jisa first, then apply to transfer the CTF. On the Jisa application form, I must first warrant that the child does not already have a CTF. But she does. I called the helpline last week. "Wait until Monday," came the reply.

But that is all a minor inconvenience compared with the hassle of moving the bare trust. Here, the assets have to be sold first, and the cash moved into the Jisa, subject to the annual Jisa limits. Even by straddling two tax years, I can't quite get all the contents of the bare trust into the Jisa. So now we're stuck with two accounts and two sets of fees until next April.

That set me thinking about the £30 annual charge currently levied by the investment trust for providing a savings plan. Of course I hated it when it was introduced. But will it end up cheaper than the platform fee I'll henceforth be paying?

The short answer is not yet (I've chosen a very cheap platform) but at some point in the future it might.

I also find myself increasingly wondering about the point of the whole palaver. Yes, we are sheltering income and capital gains from tax, but children have a personal allowance the same as everyone else.

Am I really such an ace investor that my kids' Jisas will generate annual income of £11,000 or more? Unlikely.

Jisas, CTFs and bare trusts all ensure that the children get their hands on the cash at age 18.

How wise is this? Who knows what they'll do with it? That's money that we could have been putting in our own Isas, or paying off the mortgage.

The more I think about it, the more I have to conclude that junior Isas are good for politicians (who get to grandstand about "helping hardworking families"), the financial services industry (which gets lots of captive customers) and the relatively small numbers of parents (or grandparents) with plenty of cash to spare.

For the vast majority of Britons, who don't fully fund their own Isas or pensions and have too much debt already, children's savings products that lock your money up for 18 years are a bit of a gimmick. I'm beginning to wish I hadn't bothered with them at all.Jonathan Eley is editor of [email protected]: @jonathaneley

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