Redundancy Looming - What to do with Savings

PlanningAhead_2

Redundancy is on the cards for both myself and my husband (work for same co.) and we have one pre-school age child. We have no other debts other than the mortgage (£160,000). We have a Fixed Rate Offset Mortgage which allows us options to offset our savings against the mortgage, overpay the mortgage and get the money back at any time, plus we have the option of only paying the interest element of the mortgage. Currently we pay both interest and capital on the mortgage and we offset our mortgage against savings (currently £20,000 and increasing by £1,000 a month). We also overpay the mortgage by £500 a month.

If I/we were to be made redundant, what would be our best option to protect our savings and maximise any benefit we might be entitled to.

If we were to put all of our savings into mortgage just before being made redundant or shortly afterwards, would those savings still affect what benefit entitlements I/we may receive?

getmore4less

Are you going to get any redundancy?

There is little you can do to hide this.

Have you any mortgage protection policy?

It might be worth trying the transfer into the mortgage imediately or a few £k at a time depending how soon the redundancy will be.

As long as you are sure you can get it back to pay the bills if the benifits people decide you it was a deliberate deprivation of assets.

Some offsets like Barclays overpaying just increases the reserve so easy to get the money back others you have to ask.

Rockporkchop

You are allowed to have a certain amount of savings and still claim benefits (used to be about £6,000, not sure what it is now). Have you considered keeping the allowed amount in your offset account and either putting the rest in your child's account or buying premium bonds in the child's name for the time being?

SomeBozo

Rockporkchop wrote: »

You are allowed to have a certain amount of savings and still claim benefits (used to be about £6,000, not sure what it is now). Have you considered keeping the allowed amount in your offset account and either putting the rest in your child's account or buying premium bonds in the child's name for the time being?

Any means testes benefits will include any child savings.

You can't "hide" the money, nor can you spend it as it will be looked on as "depriving yourself".

Bozo