What can I do to remedy ISA cash/shares transfer latency?
"One possibility you may consider is to keep all of your funds in the stocks and shares ISA while investing that proportion you wish to keep in cash into a tradeable ""Money Market"" ETF. A Money Market ETF will give you rates comparable to interest rates on cash and at the same time it will give you ""instant access"" subject to normal 3 day settlement of equities.   This is not exactly a perfect solution.  Most Money Market ETFs will pay monthly dividends, so depending on your timing, you may have to give up some interest.  In the worst case, if you were to sell the day before going ex-dividend, then you would be giving up a months interest.  In the best case,  if you were to sell on the day of going ex-dividend, you would be giving up no interest."
My wife and I do this. We have one account for income and one for expenditures (and around 7 others for dedicated savings.) Doing this we are forcing ourselves to keep track of all expenditures as we have to manually transfer funds from one to the other, we try to do this periodically (every Wednesday) and then keep the expenditures within what is actually on the account. It is a really good way to keep track of everything. Bear in mind that our bank provides a fast handy smartphone app where we both can check our account as well as transfer funds in less than 10 seconds. (Fingerprint authentication, instant funds transfer as well as zero fees for transfers.) Right now we have a credit card each attached to the expenditures account, but earlier we only had a debit card each and no credit cards. Meaning that when the weekly funds ran out we where simply not able to pay. We did this to mimic living only on cash and when the cash runs out you simply have to stop buying stuff. And at the same time we could accrue quite a bit of savings. I would definitely recommend this if you have problems with over expenditures. I think the key thing is flexibility - the money is not tied in with the offset mortgage. If you find a better investment, you can always take some of it out and put it towards that instead. Once it matures, if there is nothing good to reinvest in, then it can go back into the offset mortgage. Once you have had money in the offset account, even if you take it out, you have already (irreversibly) saved money on your mortgage. Right now you would be pressed to find an instant access ISA with a rate higher than 1.5%, so if you need immediate access, then the offset account seems good. On the other hand, for retirement, you might be saving longer term, and then you can get an ISA rate of 3%, currently, which may be better for a part of the money (or perhaps the upcoming Lifetime ISA with 25% yearly bonus may make sense for part of the money), if you do not need easy access to all of it. As Dilip says, this assumes you want safe investments. "This question and your other one indicate you're a bit unclear on how capital gains taxes work, so here's the deal: you buy an asset (like shares of stock or a mutual fund).  You later sell it for more than you bought it for.  You pay taxes on your profit: the difference between what you sold it for and what you bought it for.  What matters is not the amount of money you ""withdraw"", but the prices at which assets are bought and sold. In fact, often you will be able to choose which individual shares you sell, which means you have some control over the tax you pay.  For a simple example, suppose you buy 10 shares of stock for $100 each in January (an investment of $1000); we'll call these the ""early"" shares.  The stock goes up to $200 in July, and you buy 10 more shares (investing an additional $2000); we'll call these the ""late"" shares.  Then the stock drops to $150.  Suppose you want $1500 in cash, so you are going to sell 10 shares. The 10 early shares you bought have increased in value, because you bought then for $100 but can now sell them for $150.  The 10 late shares have decreased in value, because you bought them for $200 but can now only sell them for $150.  If you choose to sell the early shares, you will have a capital gain of $500 ($1500 sale price minus $1000 purchase price), on which you may owe taxes.  If you sell the late shares, you will have a capital loss of $500 ($1500 sale price minus $2000 purchase price is -$500), which you can potentially use to reduce your taxes.  Or you could sell 5 of each and have no gain or loss (selling five early shares for $150 gives you a gain of $250, but selling five late shares for $150 gives you a loss of $250, and they cancel out). The point of all this is to say that the tax is not determined by the amount of cash you get, but by the difference between the sale price and the price you purchased for (known as the ""cost basis""), and this in turn depends on which specific assets you sell.  It is not enough to know the total amount you invested and the total gain.  You need to know the specific cost basis (i.e., original purchase price) of the specific shares you're selling.  (This is also the answer to your question about long-term versus short-term gains.  It doesn't matter how much money you make on the sale.  What matters is how long you hold the asset before selling it.) That said, many brokers will automatically sell your shares in a certain order unless you tell them otherwise (and some won't let you tell them otherwise).  Often they will use the ""first in, first out"" rule, which means they will always sell the earliest-purchased shares first. To finally get to your specific question about Betterment, they have a page here that says they use a different method.  Essentially, they try to sell your shares in a way that minimizes taxes.  They do this by first selling shares that have a loss, and only then selling shares that have a gain.  This basically means that if you want to cash out $X, and it is possible to do it in a way that incurs no tax liability, they will do that. What gets me very confused is if I continue to invest random amounts of money each month using Betterment, then I need to withdraw some cash, what are the tax implications.  As my long answer above should indicate, there is no simple answer to this.  The answer is ""it depends"".  It depends on exactly when you bought the shares, exactly how much you paid for them, exactly when and how much the price rose or fell, and exactly how much you sell them for.  Betterment is more or less saying ""Don't worry about any of this, trust us, we will handle everything so that your tax is minimized."" A final note: if you really do want to track the details of your cost basis, Betterment may not be for you, because it is an automated platform that may do a lot of individual trades that a human wouldn't do, and that can make tracking the cost basis yourself very difficult.  Almost the whole point of something like Betterment is that you are supposed to give them your money and forget about these details." "You can have as many IRA accounts as you want (whether Roth or Traditional), so you can have a Roth IRA with American Funds and another Roth IRA with Vanguard if you like. One disadvantage of  having too many IRA accounts with small balances in each is that most custodians  (including Vanguard) charge an annual fee for maintaining IRA accounts with small balances but waive the fee if the balance is large. So it is best to keep your Roth IRA in just one or two funds with just one or two custodians until such time as investment returns plus additional contributions made over the years makes the balances large enough to diversify further. Remember also that you cannot contribute the maximum to each IRA; the sum total of all your IRA contributions (doesn't matter whether to Roth or to Traditional IRAs) for any year must satisfy the limit for that year. You can move money from one IRA of yours to another IRA (of the same type) of yours without any tax issues to worry about. Such movements (called rollovers or transfers) are  not contributions and do not count towards the annual contribution limit. The easiest way to do move money from one IRA account to another IRA account is by a trustee-to-trustee transfer where the money goes directly from one custodian (American Funds in this case) to the other custodian (Vanguard in this case). The easiest way of accomplishing this is to call Vanguard or go online on their website, tell them that you are wanting to  establish a Roth IRA with them, and that you want to fund it by transferring money held in a Roth IRA with American Funds. Give Vanguard the account  number of your existing American Funds IRA, tell them how much  you want to transfer over -- $1000 or $20,000 or the entire balance as the case may be -- and tell Vanguard to go get the money.  In a few days' time, the money will appear in your new Vanguard Roth IRA and the American Funds Roth IRA will have a smaller balance, possibly a zero balance, or might even be closed if you told Vanguard to collect the entire balance.  DO NOT approach American Funds and tell them that you want to transfer money to a new Roth IRA with Vanguard: they will bitch and moan and drag their heels about doing so because  they are unhappy to lose your business, and will probably screw up the transfer. Talk to Vanguard only. They are eager to get their hands on your IRA money and will gladly take care of the whole thing for you at no charge to you. DO NOT cash in any stock shares, or mutual fund shares, or whatever is in your Roth IRA in preparation for ""cashing out of the old account"". There is a method where you take a ""rollover distribution"" from your American Funds Roth IRA and then deposit the money into your new Vanguard Roth IRA within 60 days, but I recommend most strongly against using this because too many people manage to screw it up. It is 60 days, not two months; the clock starts from the day American Funds cuts your check, not when you get the check, and it is stopped when the money gets deposited into your new account, not the day you mailed the check to Vanguard or the day that Vanguard received it,  and so on. In short, DO NOT try this at home:  stick to a trustee-to-trustee transfer and avoid the hassles." To answer your question in its entirety there's more information we need (exchange, session, traded security, order type, etc.). Most exchanges support partial fills, that is your order will be partially executed and modified.  In your example, you'd get an execution of 10 shares at $100, and your order ticket will be modified to $100 for 990 shares. Like John Bensin explained, there are ways to prevent partial filling through order modifiers (e.g. Fill-or-Kill). My addition here is, there are also ways to prevent the other bit, i.e. do the partial fill but don't keep a modified order in the system.  You'd have to mark the order Immediate-or-Cancel (IoC).  In your case you'd be partially filled (10 @$100) and that's it.  For the remaining 990 shares you'd have to enter a new order. "Your bank Lloyds sent the Australian bank $500 AUD, having converted $317.90 GBP at a rate of 1.5728 AUD per GBP which was slightly less than the published rate which normally applies to transfers measured in hundred thousands if not  millions of pounds.  Using the published rate amounts to an unstated fee of 11 AUD which you are not complaining about.  You also paid a fee to Lloyds of 20 GBP which you disclosed after I had posted this answer. The Australian bank refused to accept the payment because the account to which the money had to be deposited was closed.  Perhaps, instead of just sending back $500 AUD, it converted the amount to GBP (less its fee of what I suspect is $60 AUD) and sent it back.  Notice that the bank rate of 1.592 AUD per GBP says that 276.58 GBP is what you get from a tad over  $440 AUD, and so perhaps St George's charged you a $60 AUD fee for the conversion while converting the rest ($440 AUD) to GBP. Or maybe Lloyds  got $500 AUD from St Georges and charged you a $60 AUD fee for converting it to GBP. Regardless of who did the  conversion, it is also possible that the rate you got (not  quite as good as the published rate) corresponds to $450 AUD converting to 276.58 GBP and a $50 AUD fee for the conversion.   You said I was told by Lloyds TSB that St. Georges wouldn't levy any charges, as they would be paid a separate ""agent's fee"". This might have been told to you as ""St. Georges will not be levying any charges if you send $500 AUD for deposit to the account in Australia and your payee will get exactly $500 AUD if you pay us 317.90 GBP plus 20 GBP as our conversion fee today. If you want to send GBP instead, we cannot tell you how much to send  because St. George's will levy a charge for conversion to AUD, and the conversion will be at the rate then prevailing. So your payee may receive more or less than $500 AUD."" Perhaps, wanting to send exactly $500 AUD, you chose to pay Lloyds TSB and send AUD. But, since the account was closed, the money came back, and so you ended up paying yet another conversion fee. The questions are, who charged the second fee? As Muro said in a comment, it should be listed somewhere on the itemized statement. and is it a reasonable charge? I think $50 or $60 AUD is excessive but, then, I am not a bank, and maybe that is what their standard (minimum) charge is. As I said in my comment, the charge is usually a percentage of the amount transferred subject to a minimum levy that the bank sets." While I don't disagree that Wells is trash, it may not be intentional reordering on their part. Some merchants don't settle their machines in a timely manner which can delay an item from posting. So while they were run first, and the funds were probably held in the correct order awaiting posting, the last item CAN clear first due to this. I would reach out to the bank for fee reversals, using the receipts as proof of transaction order. GBP is widely traded currency and it is definitely possible to send GBP internationally with out any conversion. Of late banks are trying to maximize the FX and if they see a Euro country the sending bank assumes the beneficiary account is in Euro and converts to get FX spread than letting the beneficiary bank decide. Keep complaining to your bank and then the sending bank will put your account in exception and not convert next payments