How to make £18000 work for me

cdgeorge

I recently had an endowment mature - giving me £18000 in the bank - but rather than it just sit there - what's the best way to make that £18000 work for me?

I don't need to pay any part of my mortgage off yet.

lisyloo

What is your mortgage rate?
What's your tax rate?
Do you have an other emergency access savings? If so how much in terms of "months of living costs"?
Are you covered for death, redundancy, sickness/accident e.g. insurance or employer benefits?
Do you have a pension? Is it adequately funded?
Do you have a legal spouse? What tax rate does you spouse pay?
What other savings/investments/assets/properties do you have?
What's your attitude to risk? i.e. can you afford to lose some of this £18K? Would you have sleepless nights if one day it went down £1000 or could you cope with some volatility?

Sorry, but it's too vague a question without the answers.

cdgeorge

OK I'm impressed! I thought on a very active forum like this my simple little question would be drowned out - so was considering trying to ask the same question on a less busy money related forum.

I'm completely pants when it comes to money ideas - not because I don't necessarily have the savvy - but I'm just so damn lazy about what to do about it.

Lisyloo - your questions do make me think just how vague I am being - thank you! At the same time this helps me focus!!

For now though I can tell you then I am employed by local governemt (in ICT) - and my wife and I earn £45,000 between us - which in today's day and age - is not a lot considering other factors.

The pension side of things with our salary we think is a luxury item - I know we should not think like that but - we have to survive. Nevertheless, I am 47 and have been in the local government pension scheme since the age of 30 - so perhaps not ideal but better than some.

Our mortage is £100,000 approx - its split 3 ways - buy by August it will all be down to about 2.9% I think (again I need to check).

I have no other investment savings - in fact I have £10,000 on a 0% credit card which we are managing OK. However I refuse to pay off the CC with the money because I need to put that aside for the Mortgage as and when. We have £100,000 equity on the house though.