Short Term Help

kc_12321

Hi,

I've recently received 20k which I plan to use when I go travelling for 8 months or so from the 1st August.

Currently the money is sitting in a current account not doing anything.

It would be great to do something with this until I go away/ until I need it whilst I'm away.

Any suggestions?!

purple45

You could use the comparison tables here to look at interest rates on instant access type accounts and see if there are any worth your while opening
https://compare.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/savings

or if the interest doesn't work out to be much you could buy premium bonds and hope for a big win, knowing you'd at least have your 20k back at the end of it!

Thats what I'd do anyway, if I ever had money!

bowlhead99

If the current account is a Santander 123 account, it will be earning you 3% which, (after tax if you're a taxpayer) is close to inflation but not really beating it by much. If it's not, then consider one of those as the simplest way to get a reasonable risk-free return on 20k, though it may require transferring cash back and forth each month to meet the terms and conditions if your real main current account is somewhere else. Other banks have similar promotional offers but for smaller amounts.

You may find a decent 'regular saver' product with slightly higher interest that you could use, drip-fed from the 123 account for a few months and then withdraw but you couldn't get the whole amount into it and you would have to meet those T&Cs as well as Santander's. Probably not worth it over only 7 months (IMHO)

If you wanted to beat inflation you would need to use investments, which over that timescale would be a coin-toss as to whether they made or lost you money. If you need to get it all back in August nobody would recommend equity or bond funds any more than learning poker or putting it on a horse.