Where now for safety?

lostinrates

Snooze wrote: »

Well there's no need for property actually. I have in the past buried valuable items in woods and also hidden them in undergrowth in the corners of farmer's fields, just over the wall from a quiet country lane. All work just as well as long as you do it when no-one's around, obviously. Certainly safer than having them in bank & savings accounts at the moment imho!!!!! :eek:

Rob

Jeepers creepers :eek: :eek: :eek: so, metal detectors might well be prudent investments too then?;)

fc123

Hi we've banked with The Co-op for many years and I don't think they got up to some of the crazy lending schemes that others did...just by the careful way they have managed our account over the years.
Just to get a £2k overdraft (when T/O weekly was average £10k) they wanted to see accounts etc....and that was 3 years ago at the height of the lend anyone anything..and we own a house with equity.

So whilst I haven't seen any figures for them...they seem a bit more traditional.
OH's mate has over 2 million in cash (from a sold BTL empire) and shifted a lot to them after doing his own research.

I'm understanding my dad more now as this summer, when we were talking about selling and banking the cash, he said it would be the worst thing to do at the PRESENT time. Sometimes he's not very clear in explaining...but he said the best thing for us was to keep it in the house....as a house is always worth a house (I posted it before). He was going on about ainflation, banks etc etc
I do wonder if now, if a more modest property came up that had had the price slashed, and it could be bought outright (no mortgage) then , whilst it could be worth less in the future (in terms of ££££) it will always be worth a house, a living space that is always yours (unless we have a war and get invaded by an army).

I am not saying....go buy a house at all, but I think our mindsets have to change. If one has, say, 200k, the 'old way' was to use that to buy something 'worth' £400k (or more) but, in some ways it's what things are worth that is changing.
As has been posted on here. savings accounts are just IOU's.

A modest property owned outright will always be a 'valuable asset' ...the biggest value being that you can live in it, not fret over rent, security of tenure etc. The overriding value is not monetry (sic).

I hope I've explained what I am trying to say correctly as I'm not saying..buy a house.
........but I had a friend in Dorset who sold her London flat and had enough to buy a modest 2 bed cottage outright OR a cottage with land (for her gardening business) with a 50% mortgage.
She went for the no mortgage option (I confess, I said do the 50% mortgage) and she is totally safe from all that's going on at the moment.....and her earnings are very low now.

Conrad

HSBC and also small regional ultra cautios Building Societies such as Saffron.

I argued against all these pathetic sounding marketing mans ice save / kauptthang accounts a while back and as ever got laughed at over on the savings board.

Sometimes I think intelligent people get to sucked into what I call 'Which' magazine mentality - over analysis and irrelevance - academic style thinking.

Also now is probably not too bad a time to buy cheap repos. Pointless trying to time the exact bottom.

morg_monster

we only have a wee savings pot, about 25k joint in Egg and then i have 5k in my name in Egg ISA and OH has about 10k in his name in Egg ISA and nationwide esavers. But the 25k needs to be accessed over the next 9 months for our wedding, and possibly house deposit at some point, so would be a pain if anything happened to Egg like Icesave and I couldn't access the money for a while; even if I wasn't worried about losing it in the long run.

So although i'm happy with the health of citibank, i was idly wondering about moving it to a bank with high street branches so that I can access the cold hard cash myself at any time rather than having to wait for money to move through the internet ether. Nationwide or the post office. Our ISAs are with Egg too, not sure I would bother to move that as would take a pretty big hit on interest rates since so many good ISAs forbid transfers in.

Have just thought though - with todays rate cut, probably better to keep the 25k with Egg as its in their 6.3% fixed for a yr egg saver. would have to take quite a drop on interest for the sake of convenience.

dopester

Snooze wrote: »

The best place for your money at the moment is in a water/fireproof box buried/hidden somewhere with the boundaries of your property. That's where mine is and all my accounts are empty except for a few quid.

There doesn't seem much harm in doing that for some of your savings. Forgetting the interest on cash and hiding some carefully for emergency. I've done that too.

I've read that in the Great Depression, one of the challenges the authorities had for bringing about a recovery, was people preferring to operate, pay, trade, in cash.... with it all staying out of the banking system.. Although there are of course security risks.

lostinrates

wow, co op savings really are lower interest rates aren't they?! While I understand, and really do accept this is probably safer for preserving our bank deposit, is it 'safer' in the braoder sense to take the risk of money not keeping rate with inflation?

morg_monster

don't forget, that box should be maggot proof too.

And probably not advisable if you live in an area prone to flooding...

lostinrates

The thing with the field option is that many, many farmers and estates sell the rights to metal detect on their land. This would seriously concern me.

WTF?_2

I wouldn't like to try burying cash (notes) for any period of time. That's where gold comes in - totally inert and takes up much less volume so easier to store and transport than cash too.

Realy

!!!!!!? wrote: »

I wouldn't like to try burying cash (notes) for any period of time. That's where gold comes in - totally inert and takes up much less volume so easier to store and transport than cash too.

Madness if gold starts crashing, you have to dig it up (providing it is still there and not been ploughed up etc) then find a dealer who will then want to test it then pay you below market rate for it!
Also less volume = easier to steal
I would rather try and run off with £20K gold than £20K in £1 coins.