Best use for inheritance

Eros

My wife and I are shortly to inherit a reasonable sum of money. After various outgoings to children,diy,charity, etc we would like to put two sums away toward retirement. £40000 for five years and £50000 away for ten years.

Would taking out a personal pension, putting into fixed rate ISAs or moving money every 2 or 3 years to best fixed rate accounts be the best routes for returns. We are not particularly keen to put the money in Stock and Shares - though might consider doing this for a small percentage.
Your comments would be appreciated.

relaxtwotribes

You need a full and complete assessment of your current financial position, your future needs and the ways in which those needs can be met, your debts, your assets, your family situation (parents, children), in order for anyone to come up with a sensible plan that you will feel comfortable with.

You have made the first step - an acknowledgement that you need some advice. But please do not think that you will get all the advice you need from this site. Get it from a professional, then question his/her advice until you are entirely clear and comfortable with it.

One bit of advice I will give you is, if you do make investments for fixed terms of 5 and 10 year be absolutely clear what the costs would be if you change you mind and want access to the money.

Eros

Thanks for the advice folks.

Primrose

This is too large a sum of money not to get some professional advice. But as you are planning longterm for this money to supplement your retirement income I would certainly recommend that you both use up as much of your ISA allowances every year as possible so that by the time you reach retirement you have both build up a nice tax free nest egg. This would mean working out each year how much you can afford to "fix" for no longer than 12 months so that it's available for next tax year's allowance. If you are wary of equities, perhaps just a small amount of this every year could go into an equity ISA, although if your retirement is fairly distant, this might be a better bet than cash deposits which could, over time, be eroded by inflation.