Deposit & Lifetime ISA (LISA) Savings Calculator

A Lifetime ISA is a UK government savings account for first-time buyers (also usable for retirement from age 60). For every £1 you pay in, the government adds a 25% bonus on top — so £4 of your own money becomes £5. Contributions are capped at £4,000 per tax year, which caps the maximum bonus at £1,000 a year. That £4,000 is a LISA-specific limit sitting inside your overall £20,000 annual ISA allowance, not a separate pot on top of it. This calculator applies both figures exactly — if you set a monthly LISA contribution that would exceed £4,000 in a full year, it flags this and correctly caps the real bonus rather than assuming a simple "monthly amount × 12 × 25%" figure.

Something else entirely, and it's a common point of confusion. £450,000 is the maximum price of the property itself for a LISA to be used penalty-free towards a first-home purchase — it has nothing to do with the size of your deposit. You could be saving a £15,000 deposit towards a £150,000 flat, or a £40,000 deposit towards a £400,000 house — both are fine as long as the property price stays under the cap. This calculator's "target deposit amount" is just the cash sum you're aiming to save; it doesn't check that figure against any specific property price, so you'll need to keep the £450,000 cap in mind separately when you're actually house-hunting.

This is the single most important thing to understand before opening one. Withdraw LISA funds for any reason other than a qualifying first-home purchase, or before age 60, and the government applies a 25% withdrawal charge to the entire amount you take out — not just to the bonus you were given. Because 25% of your total balance (your contributions plus the bonus) is a bigger number than the 25% bonus you originally received on your contributions alone, this charge doesn't just cancel out the bonus — it eats into your own original savings too. In practice, a saver who paid in £4,000 and received a £1,000 bonus, then withdrew the full £5,000 for a non-qualifying reason, would receive back only £3,750 — a genuine £1,250 loss on their own money, not merely a forfeited bonus. Only use a LISA for money you're confident you'll put towards a first home under the price cap, or won't need before age 60.

Yes, and it's current, not hypothetical. On 23 June 2026 the UK government launched a consultation looking at replacing the Lifetime ISA with a new first-time-buyer ISA. The proposal under consideration would remove the 25% early-withdrawal penalty entirely and instead pay the government bonus as a lump sum at the point of purchase, rather than accruing it with each contribution. The £450,000 first-home price cap is also reportedly under review as part of the same consultation. Nothing has been confirmed or legislated yet — this calculator models the LISA exactly as its rules stand today — but if you're planning your savings several years out, it's worth checking gov.uk periodically for where this consultation lands before treating current LISA rules as fixed for the long term.

It simulates your savings month by month rather than doing a single end-of-plan sum, precisely because the £4,000/year cap means the bonus rate isn't uniform once your contributions in a given tax year exceed that limit. Each simulated tax year resets your LISA contribution room; once you hit £4,000 within that year, further LISA-designated contributions in the same year stop attracting the 25% bonus in the model (they're not lost — they simply don't compound with a bonus that isn't available). If your entered monthly LISA amount would push you over £4,000 in a full year, the results panel shows a specific warning explaining that the real bonus is lower than a naive monthly-times-12 estimate — rather than silently overstating it.

Yes. Turn the LISA toggle off and the calculator becomes a straightforward deposit-savings timeline: current savings, plus a fixed monthly amount, against your target deposit, with no bonus applied. This is the right setting if you're not eligible (LISAs are generally only open to those aged 18–39 when the account is opened), if you're saving towards a property priced over £450,000, or if you'd simply rather keep your deposit savings flexible and accessible without the 25% withdrawal-penalty risk attached to non-qualifying withdrawals.

Honestly, it depends on your own circumstances, and this calculator isn't going to tell you one is simply better than the other — they're genuinely different tools that suit different situations. A LISA adds a 25% government bonus on top of your own contributions, which is the strongest incentive on offer, but that money is locked to two specific uses: a first home under £450,000 or withdrawal from age 60, with a 25% penalty applied to the whole withdrawal if you take it out for anything else. NHS Credit Union's payroll deduction scheme (where your employer is a partner — it isn't universal, see the guide linked below) pays no bonus at all, but the money is simply yours, saved automatically from your pay with no lock-in and no penalty for withdrawing it for a different purpose if your plans change. If you're reasonably confident you're buying a first home under the price cap within a few years, the LISA bonus is hard to beat. If you value flexibility, aren't sure yet whether or when you'll buy, or have already used your LISA contribution room for the year, payroll saving through a credit union is a genuinely sound way to keep building a deposit without the lock-in. Plenty of people use both. See FrontlinePay's full breakdown at the <a href="/savings/nhs-credit-union-payroll-savings-explained/">NHS Credit Union Payroll Savings guide</a> and the wider <a href="/savings/">NHS Savings &amp; Salary Sacrifice hub</a>.

They're calculated live from the same Agenda for Change pay data and take-home pay engine used by FrontlinePay's NHS Pay Calculator and mortgage guides, not hand-typed or estimated separately — so if pay scales are updated, the worked example updates with them. It assumes Band 5, point 1 (England/Wales/NI), no High Cost Area Supplement (i.e. outside London weighting), standard 2015 NHS Pension Scheme membership, no student loan repayments, and a monthly savings amount set at roughly 10% of take-home pay purely as an illustrative, commonly-suggested starting point — not a recommendation of what you personally should save. Your own pay band, point, location, pension status, student loan and realistic monthly savings amount will very likely differ, which is exactly why the calculator above lets you enter your own figures directly rather than relying on the example.

Both Shared Ownership and the First Homes scheme are separate routes designed to reduce how large a deposit and mortgage you need in the first place — Shared Ownership lets you buy a percentage share of a home and pay subsidised rent on the rest, while First Homes offers new-build homes at a discount of at least 30% off market value for eligible first-time buyers. A LISA still helps under either scheme, since the government bonus applies to whatever deposit or share purchase you're saving towards, as long as the qualifying purchase and price-cap conditions are met. See the <a href="/mortgages/">NHS Mortgages hub</a> for the fuller picture on both schemes and how NHS staff are typically assessed for a mortgage.

This calculator answers the first practical question — how long until I have my deposit — which naturally comes before working out how much you could then borrow on top of it. Once you have a deposit figure and rough timeline from this tool, the <a href="/calculators/nhs-mortgage-calculator/">NHS Mortgage &amp; Borrowing Calculator</a> takes your NHS salary (sole or joint) and estimates a realistic borrowing range, so you can see the full picture — deposit plus borrowing power — against the kind of property you're aiming for. Both tools, plus profession-specific deposit-building guidance for nurses, doctors, midwives, paramedics, pharmacists, AHPs, HCAs and admin & estates staff, sit under the <a href="/mortgages/">NHS Mortgages hub</a>.

No. This is a savings-timeline calculator built around the LISA's published rules — it doesn't know your eligibility, your risk tolerance, or whether your circumstances make a LISA the right vehicle for you over other options like a standard Help to Buy ISA (closed to new savers, but some legacy holders still have one) or an ordinary savings account. Whether to open or contribute to a LISA is a genuine financial decision with a real downside if plans change — read the withdrawal-penalty warning above carefully, check the current rules on gov.uk, and speak to an independent financial adviser if you want personalised guidance.