The Stocks and Shares ISA is designed to build long-term wealth. Any adult in the UK can get it and contribute up to £20,000 a year. All returns are completely free of income tax, dividend tax and capital gains tax throughout your life. If you are married or in a civil partnership, you can even pass on any unused pot to them upon your death, retaining all the tax benefits.

Many people prefer a Cash ISA which is safer. This is useful for short-term savings, but history shows that stocks outperform over the long term.

Should you choose stocks over cash?

Over the last decade, the average Cash ISA has paid 4% per annum. Average for a change Stocks and shares ISA According to Investing Insiders, it delivered at a rate of 9.5% per year. Let’s look at what this means for someone investing a lump sum of £20,000.

A Stocks and Shares ISA turns an initial £20,000 into a staggering £304,406 after 30 years. Actual investment returns are measured in decades. This means it pays to start as early as possible.

So how much do you need to generate a second monthly income of £1,500, making it £18,000 a year? The answer depends on performance.

• 4% – £450,000
• 5% – £360,000
• 6% – £300,000

I’m looking for crops

As my list shows, the higher the yield, the higher the potential income. Fortunately, there are plenty of juicy ones dividend stocks on FTSE100 Today. In fact, 25 of them yield 4% or more. Of these, seven yield between 6% and 8%. He is the most generous of all Legal and General Group (LSE: LGEN), which yields 8.1%. I’m holding it myself.

It is one of the largest institutional investors in the world, managing over £1 trillion. It also provides wealth management, occupational pensions, personal retirement products and protection such as life insurance. It is a household name that will make many investors feel safer buying it. However, no stock is completely risk-free, and that is the case here.

Share prices have been delicate recently. Legal and General’s share price is up just 12% in the last year and is down 5% in five years. To some extent, these revenues have been achieved at the expense of growth.

A key reason is that underlying pre-tax profits for the full year have remained fairly stable recently, as the list below shows:

• 2025 – £1,623 billion
• 2024 – £1.616 billion
• 2023 – £1,667 billion
• 2022 – £2,517 billion
• 2021 – £2,265 billion

Legal & General was hit by the 2022 gilt crisis in the wake of Liz Truss’s mini-budget and has been struggling ever since. I hope this turns around. In the meantime, there is this income. It should remain credible as management has increased the dividend every year since 2010, with the exception of a freeze in the pandemic year of 2020. However, future growth will be slower at just 2% per year.

I think Legal & General is worth considering for earnings, but I’d also like to see some share price growth at some point. I hope this will come in time.

Is it worth investing £5,000 in Legal & General Group Plc now?

If investing expert Mark Rogers and his team have stock advice, it can pay to listen. After all, Twelfth Magpie’s flagship Share Advisor newsletter, which it has run for almost a decade, provides thousands of paying members with the best share recommendations from across the UK and US markets.

Mark believes there are 6 standout stocks that investors should consider buying right now. Want to check if Legal & General Group Plc is on the list?

Harvey Jones owns shares in Legal & General.