My mother has £200,000 cash to invest for retirement, please help!

CompBunny

Thanks Kidsmugsy and xylophone, I will pass all of this on to her and I know she will be very grateful, as am I!

I'll post back here with any comments or questions she has.

Thanks for all of your help so far guys, it might raise more questions but from this we can at least establish a plan of action together to get things moving for her

jackyann

My best return has been on the £50 I put in my Ladbrokes account - it stands now at £70 - but I am far too cautious to bet more than £2.50 each way (horses, I should say, the only gambling I do!)

Good luck to your mum; I would add that as long as she spreads the money around now, so as to keep it safe, she doesn't have to rush into anything. I have found excellent advice on this board, and keep reviewing my options.

kidmugsy

I should add that "extra 10.4% on her State Pension for every year she defers it" is wonderful value for a woman of sixtyish in good health. (It's so good that under the proposed new State Pension scheme that reward will be halved. So if she falls under the new rules, deferring may not look attractive enough that she'll want to do it.)

CompBunny

Thankyou once again I've passed all of the information on to my Mum and she says thankyou very much for all your help and information!

She is contacting the provider of her workplace pension, Aviva, to get information about what she/her employer pays in, whether she can contribute more etc. She will also find out about her state pension and which rules it is under.

I spoke to her about the stocks and shares ISAs but she wasn't keen. Apparently she got one in 2005 and it has lost quite a lot of its value... is this something I should be strongly encouraging her to reconsider?

david516

Need 10% returns per year? Ship off your funds abroad to a developing country where they offer more than 10% interest rates! Obviously you need to carefully plan it. I am going to look into it once I have enough money collected

jimjames

david516 wrote: »

Need 10% returns per year? Ship off your funds abroad to a developing country where they offer more than 10% interest rates! Obviously you need to carefully plan it. I am going to look into it once I have enough money collected

Not exactly great advice for someone wanting low risk savings.

You might get 10% but thats not much use if the currency has dropped 30% against the pound when you want to return the money to spend it.

atush

CompBunny wrote: »

Thankyou once again I've passed all of the information on to my Mum and she says thankyou very much for all your help and information!

She is contacting the provider of her workplace pension, Aviva, to get information about what she/her employer pays in, whether she can contribute more etc. She will also find out about her state pension and which rules it is under.

I spoke to her about the stocks and shares ISAs but she wasn't keen. Apparently she got one in 2005 and it has lost quite a lot of its value... is this something I should be strongly encouraging her to reconsider?

Yes, and find out what it was invested in, and if it recovered after the crash in 08.

atush

jimjames wrote: »

Not exactly great advice for someone wanting low risk savings.

You might get 10% but thats not much use if the currency has dropped 30% against the pound when you want to return the money to spend it.

Ah, the wims of newbies. Afraid of investment risk, but happy to risk all to currency risk

CompBunny

atush wrote: »

Yes, and find out what it was invested in, and if it recovered after the crash in 08.

I'll ask her and let you know!

King_Weasel

kidmugsy wrote: »

I should add that "extra 10.4% on her State Pension for every year she defers it" is wonderful value for a woman of sixtyish in good health. (It's so good that under the proposed new State Pension scheme that reward will be halved. So if she falls under the new rules, deferring may not look attractive enough that she'll want to do it.)

Is this such "wonderful value"? You lose a year's pension payments so it takes a decade or so just to get back to where you would have been had you not deferred. I'm not saying "don't do it", but trying to warn that the 10% extra isn't comparable with, say, a 10% annual growth in an investment.