Travel Makeover

Dziekanowski

Hi folks,

New poster but regular reader here, please be gentle with me.

I'm after some advice/tips, as my life and hence finances will be undergoing something of an upheaval in the next 18 months.

Basically, starting in July, my wife and I are going to pack our bags and travel the world for a year. My wife is having to quit her job as they won't give her unpaid leave:(; my employer is kindly giving me a year's upaid leave with a guarantee of a minimum of 3 months employment once we return:).

We have £12k in M&S mini-cash ISAs between us. (Just made today's deadline in time!)

We also have £60k in premium bonds between the 2 of us (Been in there nearly a year and averaged about £150/month return and I've finally decided that a decent guaranteed rate of return is better than 3% and the tiniest chance of £1M!)

The £60k is the bit we need to restructure. Presumably, the first thing we should do is put £6k into the new financial year's mini-cash ISA allowance at the soonest opportunity, leaving £54k. From the remaining £54k, we are anticipating needing about £2.5k/month, between us, to live on while we are travelling. That would leave £24k to invest as a lump sum. We want to have the lump sum available to us at about a month's notice when we get back in a year's time.

With regard to the £2.5k/month, I don't want to have access to the year's total (£30k) directly in case our credit cards get stolen so I need to set up some kind of account with the £30k in it that will drip feed our credit card account £2.5k/month over the course of the year. That way, should our cards get stolen, the most the thief will get away with is £2.5k.

To summarise, I think I have 2 questions:

What is the best way to safely invest a £24k lump sum for a minimum of a year with a 1 month notice once that year is up?

What account (presumably a savings account that allows standing orders) would be best for us to initially invest a £30k lump sum that we transfer £2.5k out of each month to cover our living costs?

I'm sure more questions will be forthcoming as the next couple of month's pan out but I think my next stop will be to comb through the travel insurance thread with a fine comb and see what bargains have been dug up!

Thanks for reading! :beer:

Incidentally, if anyone here has any experience of jacking in their jobs and going travelling, please do get in touch. It'd be good to talk and maybe get some pearls of wisdom from you!

Note to mods: Please feel free to move this to a different forum if this one doesn't seem appropriate. (Wasn't sure if savings/investments or travel were the most appropriate)

blindman

I think this is about money so it may be moved.



However regarding the travel:

This link has a few ideas free farm

There must be loads of forums re RTW this is one from where you can get more info.

Finishrich

I think it is more savings questions you're asking so I'm going to move your post over there, I'm sure get more replies there than on the travel board.