Should I cash in my andowment

sgl1965

I have had a Woolwich endowment for £35,000 for 11 years and even with overpayments it is still only worth about what I have put into it, around £10,000. Woolwich tell me it is on course. I am only paying .69 per cent interest on it but I am still interested in hearing from anyone with experience in this department who can tell me if I should hang on to it for the next 14 years or somehow get the amount transferred to the repayment part of my mortgage which currently has £17,000 outstanding and I am also paying .69 per cent on that?

dunstonh

it is still only worth about what I have put into i

if 25 years and following a market crash, that would be about right.

Investments zig zag in value. They fell a lot over the last 2 years and currently you are buying units back at 2005 prices. You have probably seen gains of around 10-20% in the last 2 months on the endowment as the markets have recovered some of the drop. You would expect that zig zag to continue long term.

If its on track now after such a drop, then that indicates that a surplus is probably likely on maturity. We would need to know about the investments, cost to surrender, if replacement life assurance is required (and how much will it cost) along with a bit more detail on the Woolwich endowment to really give any more detail.

SandC

dunston knows his stuff but just so you know it can be done, I cashed in my endowment last year, just over a year ago now. I was not on track but the mortgage being only just under £31k with 12 years to go it wouldn't have been a desperate situation to keep it. However, I wanted piece of mind so cashed it in and paid £9k off the mortgage - I'm with Halifax and they charged me maybe a couple of hundred for the big overpayment (I'm allowed 10% per year free) but the term has stayed the same and the payments were about the same as when it was interest free plus the monthly endowment contribution.

I'm happy about it and having received my first yearly statement I'm glad I did as it's much better to be able to see the loan reduce in size instead of staying the same!