How much money do you keep as rainy day fund?

Ali660

So what do you do once you have, eg, £6000 in savings. Do you treat yourselves or do something sensible like overpay the mortgage?

We currently have £9000 put away (ISA) and are in 2 minds whether to continue to direct debit £200 per month into it or chip away at the £70,000 remaining mortgage.

Really2

Raggs wrote: »

To be able to jump upto a house big enough to make it worthwhile seriously downsizing in your 50's, is quite a lot of money invested into mortgages and housing. Any savings in taxes surely could have taken a beating from mortgage interest rates?

If you are earning enough to be able to jump that far up the ladder that fast, hopefully you've been smart enough to setup a decent tax free (or freeish) pension scheme or two.

Well I have a lifetime tracker at .49 over BOE base. Should be mortgage free before 50, so would look to have around £105K in todays terms after downsizing (most probably more as that is budgeting for a 3 bed semi).
Then a further 15-20 years (or less) to save and invest.

I froze my pensions, I also stopped playing the national lottery. I could see neither paying out that much come 65.:)
In todays terms without investing/interest that equate to around £350K (left over cash from downsize and 15 years of saving).
Wife has a LG pension (god know what will happen to that) but at least my retirement will be less dependent on what the stock exchange is doing in 25-30 years time.

But you never know I may start a pension again but I doubt it. I should imagine most of it will be in fixed term savings up until retirement.

purch

Just enough

Really2

purch wrote: »

Just enough

That metal bar you have should keep the rain off for a bit on it's own.

Conrad

Because I'm paranoid, around £40,000 readily accesible.

Thinking of selling business and shop so I can do something else........

Pete111

About 30k + another 50k easily pulled out of my flexible mortgage if things went really pear shaped.

Interesting re the 6k max savings for benefits thing. Given that both the sums above are either offset against my mortgage (30k) or what we have officially overpaid into it (50k) would I be better off putting it all into the mortgage so I could claim benefits from day one?

I beleive both 'pots' are instant access ( ie I just pay more in mortgage interest if I spend them) but assume HMRC would not consider mortgage overpayments as savings - does anyone know?

P

nearlynew

Batchy wrote: »

I think 6 months essential expenditure will be my target (around 6k), once I have house purchase and redecorations/kitchens and bathrooms done.
It will be 12 months down the road. But from day 1 it will be there, it will just get spent quickly, but this is so I dont get stung with finance charges.

So in the short term, Apart from that rainy day target... I have Credit facilities available currently and ready to go at:-
24k loan, instant availablility, which would buy me 24 months effectively (at 9.9% middle of the road option).
9k worth of credit cards if necessary (at only 6.8% this is actually the cheapest option)
4k worth of overdraft if necessary (Last resort)

This keeps me happy in the short term.

Have I read this right?

You are treating your credit limits as your available cash should things go pear shaped?



If so, that is very foolish.

Vincenzo

chucky wrote: »

this made me think that i haven't included my S&S ISA's in my 'rainy day fund'. i have 3 years joint allowance worth.

does anyone include their S&S ISA in their 'rainy day fund'?

I don't - only cash ISAs included. S&S form part of my medium to long term investments. I don't include other savings in instant access accounts either as I expect to use it for cars/house maintenance/holidays over time.

JonnyBravo

Just a bit less than purch I'd guess
:cool:

ninky_2

i have a flexible mortgage so could drawn down 100k tomorrow if i needed it.