Recieving a large sum of money soon - What to do with it?

buglawton

bargainbonkers wrote: »

...How much does Uni cost? I never finished school so no GCSEs...

I can tell from your written English that by not completing school you 'underperformed' against your real ability. I know of real life cases where people with learning difficulties went on to further education. There's lots of support available for specific disabilities. But the life not so easy as sitting at home and you have to be 100% organised, also rather easy to get into a culture clash with BF due to the big lifestyle differences.

There are plenty of further ed opportunities to prep you for uni or something similar, what you need is a clear direction and a mentor in the education system who can guide you. Perhaps you should be a bit more aggressive with the Job Centre who could refer you across to these opportunities.

CharlieCai

Abbey's First Home Buyer's account for 5%.

DiggerUK

bargainbonkers,
First things first, tell boyfriend to keep his hands in your underwear, and out of your purse.
And that's about all I've got to say on that.

You don't cop for this money till next year, so why not talk it through with your mum first. Then come back here with anything you want to check out.

You need to find out about Cash ISA's and cash savings A/C's first. For that go to the "Banking and Saving" icon at top of page.

Then look at other bog standard savings A/C's at National Savings & Investments.
http://www.nsandi.com/index.jsp

Learning how to save is the same way as learning how to walk. Baby steps first, marathon second.
Best of fortune.

savingmummy

I wouldn`t pay off your partners debt, it is his responsibility to sort that out as he got the loan and started the debt in the first place.
If he knows you will help him out he will continue doing so...just my opinion, i`ve seen it happen many times before in RL.
Good luck with whatever you chose to do with your 30k, i would personally keep it saved up and watch it build into a very tidy sum X

stevenatleven

I'm with the rest of them,don,t pay off the BF's debt.

If you really don,t want to touch it and see it grow
put it out of reach in a fixed term bond or something
similiar for 3/4 years.
At your age a sum of this sort can exert great temptation esp as your are finding things tight
financially.

One option as your are unemployed would be to find
a monthly income account paying perhaps £100/£125
this would help ease things financially and the £30K would always be there.
good luck with whatever you do.

Rollinghome

Stavros wrote: »

In closing, if you don't know an Independent financial Advisor in your area go here http://www.unbiased.co.uk/find-an-ifa/ to find one. Don't accept what they say on face value though, get into their ribs regarding their past performance and demand to see evidence of that, good luck

If you don't know what you're doing you may have no option other than going to an IFA. Bear in mind though that they are there to sell you products that pay them commission so not unlike the advice you might get when buying something from a shop and unlikely to be entirely unbiased. (The Unbiased site is run by IFA Promotion Ltd.) Be sure you fully understand how the products offered work and find out exactly how much commission they get, both immediate and ongoing. See: www.moneyweek.com/personal-finance/need-unbiased-advice-youll-be-lucky.aspx

It's easy to get an exaggerated idea of the likely returns from the stock markets and financial products, especially after management costs and commission payments, and you might find it useful to read a book such as 'The Financial Times Guide' to Investing or one from the Which? series such as 'Save and Invest' to help you understand whether what you are offered makes good sense.

Etccarmageddon

bargainbonkers wrote: »

Uh oh, this thread is getting a little off topic. Just to clarify, my relationship poses no threat to my inheritance. Quoting this though:

I never thought about this. How much does Uni cost? I never finished school so no GCSEs... Would I start with them or an entry level course for Uni that requires no prior qualifications?
Would you say Uni is a good enough investment for this money? I know people who have been to Uni and still struggled a lot to get a job.
I don't want to feel like I've "wasted" any of it.
Also, I don't like the idea of being 24 with hardly any work experience.

I'd say Uni was the best suggestion so far as an investment otherwise that money will just be pee-ed away on paying off your b/f debts and his next debts.

patman99

Just bear the following in mind. If you intend to claim benefits, then you need to make sure that any savingings over £15k 'dissappear' otherwise you are entitled to absolutely NOTHING. The easiest way to achieve this is to ask your mum to either hold the money in her account on your behalf, or ask her to open another account in her name in which to hold any surplus funds.
My friend was in the same possition a while back, and he got his sister to hold the surplus cash for him.

dawyldthing

If it was me i would try and work out what you want to do in the next 10 years. After nearly 5 years of uni, i have seen no end of people come out of uni with their degrees and are not using them in their jobs at all, and are quite literally thousands in debt. As said before you will need GCSE's and A-levels, but if you apply for it now you should get funding towards it until you turn 19, as once you start at 19 you will struggle to get funding i've always believed. In relation to when you are at uni if it is what you choose, in the 4 years of my actual studying i've worked my way through a lot of it, and most of it has paid for my working at camp and then travelling after camp to be honest. I could have paid off more of my loan, but I wouldn't have changed my past 3 summers for the world, and being at uni gives you the opportunity to travel or try different jobs for short periods of time, and give you different future career options if you are not sure as to what you want to do.

Also, at the mo Halifax have a 3 year fixed rate account which will pay 4.5%, or 3.6% I think it is after tax, generating 75 quid a month for those three years that your money would be in there for, but it would be tied up for 3 years. I think you can only do access courses after you are 21, but are not totally sure on this either.

To help you decide what to do in the future, and to check on what courses you could go on check out connections:

http://www.connexions-direct.com/

it will help you find out a lot of info in relation to jobs and give you ideas for the future.

Best of luck, and let us know what you decide

cashbackproblems

Trust me when you claim benefits they just "ask" you about any capital but dont actually check anything, so good idea to keep your mouth shut.