Saving Advice

dan.pool

By the end of Feburary my Wife and I will be debt free! :j

So we are beginning to turn our attention to savings and how to make the most of the money we can put away. I was hoping to get some advice on how to maximse what we can save, especially during the current climate.

Our plan is to move back to Canada in ~5 years time, so any savings we have would be geared towards making that as easy as possible. For the next 2 years we are looking to put all my Wife's earnings into savings, this is roughly £2200 pm.

With that in mind I had the following as a rough plan:

Each year look to fill our Cash ISA allowance.
Look to collect as much as we can over the remainder of the year and when we reach a sufficient amount (~15k) buy a fixed term tax free bond (1yr) linked to inflation from NS&I.

The once we have a sufficient amount for a deposit, use that to buy our own house. I'm hoping that in around 2 years the market will have bottomed out and we can see what the borrowing situation is looking like. Then we are at least not paying off someone else's mortgage and effectively loosing money each month.

It is a fairly risk averse strategy, I haven't really got the time or capital to start buying gold or playing the stock market; but:

• How does the general plan stand, any changes you'd make?
• Does anyone have any advice for how best to maximise my savings whilst we save to buy the bonds?
• I know that this isn't the best climate to be looking to buy, but I still feel the value of owning our own place would be worth it over a 5 year period (just from the fact that I won't have to deal with a landlord who is indifferent to the damp/cold conditions in our house would be worth it for me), or am I just being plain crazy?
• Any other comments?

Thanks in advance,
~Dan