Fantom

At present I have it in a Santander esavings account getting 3.06% interest.
My mortgage is 2.99% so after tax I'm only losing a very small amount by not paying it off the mortgage.
The trouble is anything I pay off the mortgage I cannot get back again. Very happy with my mortgage apart from this though.
So the £10k is a little nest egg to help us through now that my wife will be going part time as we just had a baby son.
My esavings account is soon to go to pretty much 0%. I can start a new one up but I will only get 1.5%!
So what do people suggest?
Just been looking on money savings expert and it looks like you can't get 3% that easily Even ISAs are worse than my current rate.
I'd like to keep access to it really as we might need to drawn £100-200 a month to help us out.
Any ideas?

Does any one have the Santander 123 current account? You get 3% in there but then it would get mixed up with my personal money. £2 a month fee

davyboy

Invest 7500. Speak to a good IFA about that, expect 10% return per year.

Stick the rest in an ISA.

Dr Hu

If you want instant access - you are going to be lucky these days to match that 3.06%...
Savings rates are falling thru the floor due to the Funding for Lending scheme from the Gov. they don't need your money anymore.....

Fantom

Davyboy, I wouldn't have the first clue about investing. I assume there will be a risk involved. Could I lose some value of the investment? Or just risk not making anything?
Any ideas on who to contact etc?

Matteeboy

Yes of course, its as easy as that. Every IFA we've spoken to has given dodgy advise that we've ignored and are glad we did.

I'd just sit on it in the bank. Preferably an overseas one.

Maz

iTrader: (34)

Either blow it or stick it under your mattress. Seems all forms of investment aren't worth bothering with!

Fantom

Mattee I need to at least match the 2.99% my mortgage charges though.
Not that worried about making money

Maybe an offset mortgage would be the solution? But can they match 2.99%?

dpb

Become a loanshark

Matteeboy

Ours is just in the bank warning naff all. Given upon making anything on it so we concentrate on the business making us money. Safe, boring but suits us.

EddScott

I would ask your current lender if they have an offset type product. Other than that its probably ISAs.

If you need a couple of hundred pounds a month from the £10K then it will be gone in about 4/5 years anyway. Probably best just splitting it between you and the wife and doing cash ISAs -even if your wife is part time its probably worth using her ISA allowance.

You could invest in stocks and shares ISAs but it will go up and down and there will be a cost involved. You could still take the withdrawals and hopefully you might get better growth than just straight forward cash ISA returns.

Fantom

Does anyone use Zopa?
http://uk.zopa.com/lending/lending-at-zopa

I know there was a thread on this in the past. I wonder if its worth me giving it a go?

Dr Hu

EddScott - You've helped me in the past - can I ask another Q...

If I fully invest in this years Stocks & Shares ISA allowance, then in 4 weeks time fill next years ISA allowance (S&S again), using a variety of OEIC's via a Fund Supermarket..... give it a year or two and the OEICS's have (hopefully) made me a profit - how do I then potentially take the profit out to spend, spend, spend without breaking my ISA allowance for that past year - presumably this is possible? - just never actually done it - sorry if this is a really dumb Q...

lordharding

iTrader: (1)

For a smallish amount like that in the world of investors but a decent amount
To us normal people your current rate is ok

As always Scooby net tradition the first advice is
Blow it all on upmarket hookers and booze and drugs
You will never forget the moments of madness

Alternative probably is a Isa as good as anything which will give you
£6 a week not quite enough for tin of babies milk
Why not try premiond bonds as £6 is not much to loose
I get a few cheques a year and its the andenalin rush in opening
The envolope is worth more then £6 a week
Quite scary when I started work if you had 100k in the bank that was a years
Salery 10k to live on
Now you need 840k to give you a living wages of 24k with
Interest rates falling to their present level

EddScott

So you do your ISA now
You do another ISA in the next tax year
In two years time say your ISAs have increased in value by £2K over initial investment and you take out the £2K
It won't make any difference to your ISA allowance for previous years or the year of withdrawal. Taking it out is the tax free bit.

What you can't do is say put £11,280 in May, take out £5,000 in June and put £5,000 back in in August.

Check the cost of some of these "supermarkets". Some can still look expensive even without the IFA fees.

Dr Hu

EddScott - Thanks for the info - so if I took out my £2k profit, the £11,280 will still continue earning tax free money that potentially I can take out again and again over the years, as long as I leave 11,280 in, any profit will always be tax-free (I appreciate if I take more out I cant re-top it up).

I was going to use Fidelity - they have no initial fee's & free transfers (allegedly!) but yep some of the funds can be 2%+ - I'm trying to find ones that have a management charge of 1 - 1.5% max.

Thx

Dr Hu

FANTOM - Best advice....

EddScott

Any growth you make is tax free and any income you receive is tax free. The money has already been taxed going in. You don't have to "only" take the growth out for it to keep its tax free status.

Don't take this as any sort of recommendation but unless you particularly want to play fund manager you might prefer to use one or two "Risk Targeted" funds. The fund tries to stay within your perceived appetite for risk rather than a a "risk rated" fund that is given a number on a sliding scale of volatility. These funds are supposed to do the legwork for you and some of them are very cheap. I like to use Vanguard funds which start at 0.3% but these aren't available on Fidelity. You could look at the Standard Life MyFolio range. They have different version depending on passive (MyFolio market) or active (Manager for SLife only funds and Multi-Manager for all funds) The Mutli Manager is the most expensive but if you track them using something like Trustnet or Funds Library there isn't much in it so no big reason not to use the cheaper market funds - the MyFolio Market funds are 0.75%. Blackrock have their consesus range and 7IM have their AAP range (the guy with the red braces been on TV a bit recently)

You might then get into the passive Vs active argument but thats for a different day and we have that argument here at least once a week.

Chip

Offset the mortgage.

ScoobySteve69

iTrader: (13)

^^^^^ This.

albob

lloyds vantage account pays three percent on a maximum of £5000 - (but you have to pay in £1000 a month).

I have two - one as my main bank account and the other for savings (I just rotate the same £1000 between the two accounts to satisfy the banks requirements)

You can have a maximum of 3 such accounts

There is a thread on 'moneysavingexpert' forums regarding the Vantage accounts

nyscooby

iTrader: (12)

buy 24k gold.... keep it 10 years....

davyboy

Not good ifa then.

I have 3 investments on the go. From 9% to 13%. I expect all of them to achieve.

Fat Boy

After 30 years in the financial sector, I recommend that you spend at least 8k on wine women, and drugs. The rest I would just squander.
HTH
FB

tarmac terror

iTrader: (2)

If its value plummets. you can spend six months pished!!!

Davey96wrx

iTrader: (1)

Find yourself a really good example of a classic car that's going up in value.

Classic very early 60's mini values are going through the roof.

Emmaroids

iTrader: (2)

Man up spend it on beer drugs and minge.

Fabioso

I have an if.com mortgage and all of my savings are offsetting the rate against the mortgage. I don't have to pay tax on the benefit because its offsetting the interest I would have been charged.

I have instant access to the money and the benefit is tax free which beats paying 40% tax

This has been working well for me over the past few years! Have seen the interest charged drop to less than £100 per month now

SiPie

Christ, you knew Georgie Best too ... !

Fat Boy

j976rna

iTrader: (2)

premium bonds,mu dad has 10k in there and wins about £50 most months