Choices at 23

limitless888

Hi guys! I am new to this forum but have been reading religiously about saving since the start of Aug and have picked up some really good ideas from peoples' posts and would like the forum's opinion on my current plan.

Firstly my goal is to save up for my first property. Looking to buy w/ mortgage hopefully in the next 3 years.
Currently I have 7k saved up and my goal this year is to save up a further 15k. I have around 1.8k coming in each month from wages and basic rate tax payer(20%). I am living with parents this year so majority of my expenses are covered.

At the moment, I have opened up a flexdirect account and a regular savings account with barclays paying 3.25%. I have alrdy maxed out the 2.5k in the flexdirect account and paying in the max £250/mth for the regular savers. I have also recently opened up a nationwide flexiclusive isa account paying 2.25% and looking to max out on that.

So my options now i was thinking either to open:

1)santander 123 account and put the remaining cash into that account (incl. my wages) to get the 3% accepting the loss of the £2 monthly fee. I should have 14k in that account by the end of this year.

2)LTSB vantage + BOS vantage to make use of the 3%. And possibly opening up further accounts on these as I have heard previous posts mentioning about it.

3)Put into a S/s ISA. (This is the one I'm less confident with, and I'm afraid of taking risks). Maybe some expert opinions here lol.. ><..

How would the forum play this scenario if you were in my shoes??

Kind regards,

Jon

Lokolo

What about pension?

limitless888

valid point, i forgot to mention i work for the nHS, so portion of my wages goes into the nhs pension scheme

matttye

If you can lock your money away for a year and live near a Nottingham BS , they do two regular savings accounts which pay 4% NET interest. One is an ISA which you can pay £480 per month into and the other is a 'Summer Saver' (locked until September 2014) which you can pay £250 into.

atush

Sounds like you are on track, and apart from the better RS offered, you are doing well.

So good to see a young person thinking so clearly about a goal and on track to achieve it.

try and keep back a tiny sum to have some fun too. You are young, enjoy it.

jamesd

The NHS pension is a superb one. More than ample for your current pension needs.

Property and then learning about investing inside a stocks and shares ISA is the way to go. Just get started. The nice thing about this is that you'll start out with relatively little money invested, so you'll have time to get used to ups and downs before the amounts become really big. And you just can't learn as well if you don't have your own money invested, it changes the psychology and that matters to successful investing.

limitless888

thanks for the advice and encouragement guys!
I'll definitely give ss isa a go at some point - i think as you said james, as im young its better to make the mistakes now rather than later.

bigadaj

limitless888 wrote: »

thanks for the advice and encouragement guys!
I'll definitely give ss isa a go at some point - i think as you said james, as im young its better to make the mistakes now rather than later.

Excellent thinking, investing and learning in parallel is a good way to go. Options now are better than they have ever been and sites such as this can allow you to sound out ideas.

Classic mistakes are to follow fashion investing, panic in falling markets and sell at low points, regular investments are a good idea. Starting with a core and then diversifying over time as you get more confident, good luck as you're ahead of most people.