No idea what to do with £300K!

vaporate

In other words sponged from other peoples money left to you.

Next...

MrandMrsB

kidmugsy wrote: »

P.S. Some of the sages here urge the importance of planning out future expenditure, which sounds pretty wise to me. But I am stumped by what to enter for our medical/care outgoings. There's every chance that the entry should be "nil" but also every chance that it would be a dominant sum in our calculations, while being very hard to estimate. I scratch my head.

Not sure that this is the right way to "quote a previous post", having never been on a forum before. Please excuse me if it's wrong.

You are right. I am not going to worry about medical / care - the figure is unknown and most members of my family die naturally of old age in their 90's.....we are both into natural things and look after ourselves quite well. There are alternatives; for instance, providing accommodation in exchange for help in the house. When I was a child most of our neighbours managed with this arrangement, and the only one who ended up in a care home had dementia.

We love living here and our son hopes to inherit our place one day because it's a haven for wildlife. I am not too keen on worrying about the future. My friend / neighbour (68) is a shining example to me: she also has an older husband (81) and she decided to retire last month. Their financial position is pretty dire: their joint pensions are a lot less than our pensions, and if her husband died I assume her only income would be bereavement allowance, plus she has some savings (and would no let her starve!). She has a very old detached house with around an acre of land, and could not cope with having to sell that house, but she does not worry about it......if you saw where we live you would know why we love living here.

What I am trying to do is maximize the income from our savings, and make it last for as long as possible. We know we cannot predict the future!

Thanks for all your thoughts to date - they are most helpful.

ashaput

well, you must be good in managing money and yourself. it's just an if... if i were you, i would invest that money into gold coin. but of course if getting great result from this investment is something you want then you shouldn't resell that gold in the next years. the longer you keep this gold, the more you can get. well you know gold are rare to come to its lowest cost. congrats for you

jamesd

ashaput, the general rule in investing is to buy low, sell high, not buy high, then wait and sell low.

Gold isn't a business that grows its size and profit generation over time as a company does, it's just a lump of metal that has volatile pricing based on short term supply and demand, which varies mostly based on fear.

dunstonh

if i were you, i would invest that money into gold coin.

Thankfully, most people have more common sense than that.

MrandMrsB

dunstonh wrote: »

Would that be because the stockmarket fell? Did it go back up again in the growth period that followed? You would expect everyone to be back in surplus now unless they are drawing a regular withdrawal.

Losing money in the short term is to be expected on investments. Just as getting very good returns in a short term period which happens to be only growth doesnt mean the adviser is doing well. You will get both periods.

I would also think it is highly unlikely that happened as well. People have different risk views and IFAs use investments to cater for all risk types. The lower risk people would have lost less in the credit crunch/recession than the higher risk people (although the strong growth that has followed would have seen higher risk portfolios perform better overall on this occasion).



IFAs account for under 2% of complaints at the FOS. These sorts of stories are actually quite rare. Most of the time it is a lack of understanding. Tied agents, bank sales reps and tied FAs are often the cause as well. One of the things you frequently hear is people say one investment they did was better than a previous one (or vice versa). Yet what actually happened was on was invested during a market crash/correction and the other wasnt. I have even heard people say a really low quality investment was better than a higher quality one because of that whereas had they stuck with it, the one that they thought was bad would have been better.

If you use an adviser you need to be able to communicate your concerns and have discussions on issues. Just because an investment goes down, does not make it bad. Just because it goes up, does not make it good.

Thanks for that, and I do know this situation is probably rare these days, which is why I only mentioned it in passing!

This large firm of IFA's recommended their own incredibly risky fund to people who were close to retirement age - a friend was hoping to retire the following year, but was unable to do so. Since many of my husband's professional friends (who should have known better) had invested in the fund, my husband asked whether we should do likewise. My answer was "NO"!!!

I believe it lost somewhere in the region of 40% in the first year, with hope of a recovery (I understand that they had lost that 40% forever). As I said, it was very risky investing. There were several editorials condemning this firm in the local rag, which is unusual because they placed large adverts in that newspaper.

As I said these scandals are probably pretty rare these days and I am not having a go at IFA's! Don't worry!!

MrandMrsB

jamesd wrote: »

ashaput, the general rule in investing is to buy low, sell high, not buy high, then wait and sell low.

Gold isn't a business that grows its size and profit generation over time as a company does, it's just a lump of metal that has volatile pricing based on short term supply and demand, which varies mostly based on fear.

Yes, I agree and have no intention of buying gold.

I believe some people see it as a way to hide money from the government, thereby enabling them to claim various benefits! I would not consider doing such a thing, in fact I would go as far as saying that one reason we have managed to amass money to enable us to retire is because we are scrupulously honest. Honestly still pays I hope. If I did something dishonest I would feel guilty about it and the money I gained would become "dirty money" (is that the correct phrase?). Does anybody else feel the same??

MrandMrsB

gallygirl wrote: »

Lovely story for anyone reading who is in a similar position to you were in 20 years ago - well done to both of you :j. I hope to be in a similar position to you in 5 years time. TBH, I intend to sell our BTL's, take a lump sum from Mr GG's pension & not worry about anything more complicated than whether to tie up in savings for 3 or 5 years. Having been pro-risk so far I intend to kick back and stop worrying about house prices, BTL's and share prices.

Until I get bored of course!

Good luck with what you decide.

It took me a while to understand this with help from MrB!

Oh if I had BTLs still I would sell too. Sold our BTLs a few years ago. If HPs go down a lot I will buy again if we need to money - this time very close to our house in case we become too cronky to move far!

Yes I want to keep it as simple as possible.

I know what you mean about getting bored - making money can be sort of addictive!

It's funny that girls have a less analytical way of making money.

MrandMrsB

vaporate wrote: »

In other words sponged from other peoples money left to you.

Next...

I don't understand this....what do you mean?

Kohoutek

MrandMrsB wrote: »

As I said these scandals are probably pretty rare these days and I am not having a go at IFA's! Don't worry!!

Most scandals between professional advisors of any kind and their customers are settled in private by the parties and the advisors' insurers.