My one-year-old twins don’t need gifts – I pay into their pensions instead

Sophia Jarvis is planning an unconventional kind of Christmas list for her twin daughters this year. Instead of asking friends and family for toys, she’s sending them a link to contribute to her girls’ investment accounts. Lily and Rose, who are one and a half, already have £2,000 saved each towards their future after their mum made the same request for their first birthday. “For birthdays and Christmases, that’s when we would really be asking for a contribution to their future instead,” she says. Shorts Sophia, 33, who lives in Oxfordshire, is the founder of Mia Wealth, an app designed to help families invest for children. She wants money given at birthdays and Christmas to help her daughters eventually buy a home, start a business or fund their retirement. There will still be presents to open. She and her husband plan to buy a few things through Vinted, and she understands why relatives might want to give something the girls can enjoy straight away. For their first birthday, their grandparents bought a sticker book alongside their financial gift. Family members could also club together for something bigger, such as a climbing frame, rather than buying lots of smaller presents. “I’m not saying no to gifts,” she says. At their first Christmas, the girls’ stockings contained something rather less expensive – wet wipes, which Jarvis says were their favourite toy. She jokes that it makes her sound like Scrooge. But at their age, she says her kids find wrapping paper and cardboard boxes can be more interesting than what is inside. The idea for making it easy for families to give financial gifts grew out of her own experience of being a mum. After coming home from hospital, Sophia felt overwhelmed by the number of presents and clothes people had bought for the twins. Jarvis is also buying hand-me-downs and second-hand goods for her children rather than buying new gifts for them She appreciated the generosity, but remembering who to thank, writing messages and taking photographs of the girls wearing their new outfits became another job to fit around caring for two babies. She even found that some clothes were so quickly outgrown that they were hardly used. It made her question whether there was another way for loved ones to give. For the girls’ first birthday, she sent a link to family and friends in a WhatsApp group, explaining that they did not need physical presents and that any contributions would go directly into their investment accounts. “And they got an extra £350 each invested for their future as a result,” she says. Now, each girl has £2,000 saved each. Sophia had been thinking about helping families invest long before she had children. She has worked in family wealth management for more than 15 years and has a background as a chartered financial analyst. Her work involved helping wealthy families invest for children and grandchildren. She wanted to make starting easier for other families, too. Then, on the day she left her job to start the business, she discovered she was pregnant. Six weeks later, an early scan revealed she was expecting twins. She was preparing for her first funding round while dealing with severe pregnancy sickness. But becoming a parent only strengthened her belief in the business and it also changed how she thought about what families could afford. She and her husband used second-hand items and hand-me-downs to reduce the cost of buying for two children and as a new business owner, she returned to work after 10 weeks. “I don’t want to put extra pressure on parents to have to find spare money at the end of the month to invest for their children,” she says. Asking relatives to redirect money they already planned to spend on gifts is one way she hopes to build the girls’ savings without adding to that pressure. The family also makes regular contributions to the girls’ junior stocks and shares ISAs and pensions. But Sophia says parents should consider their own finances first, including emergency savings and their retirement plans. “We’re not saying invest for your kids over yourself,” she says. How to invest for your kids now There are a number of options that you can look into for your kids. Firstly, you should prioritise your own finances and make sure you’re happy with the amount you’re saving and investing. Then you can start thinking about how to save for your children – even if it’s only a tiny amount each month or when you have the cash to spare. When you start saving for your kids, you have time on your side. For example, saving £25 a month adds up to £5,400 – but if you were to invest the cash and it grew at a rate of 5 per cent annually, that would be £8,730. Of course, investment returns are not guaranteed and the money could fall as well as rise. However, time is on your side if you’re investing from a young age. A Junior ISA can hold cash or investments, with a combined annual allowance of £9,000 in the 2026-27 tax year. The money belongs to the child, who can normally withdraw it from their 18th birthday. That means you can’t insist that they use it for sensible things, like a house deposit. A child’s pension has a much longer timescale. Under current rules, someone with no earnings can receive basic-rate tax relief on up to £2,880 paid into a qualifying pension each tax year, taking the total to £3,600. A £40 contribution becomes £50 with that relief. However, with a Junior Pension you won’t be able to access it until you’re at the minimum pension age. That is due to rise from 55 to 57 in April 2028 and it could rise again in the future. That means saving into a pension now won’t give them access to cash to buy your first home.