What to do?

Jaguar_Skills

Onawingandaprayer wrote: »

Is your girlfriend coming with you? If not, - and you help with her mortgage - you need to be very very sure of your relationship, being away for some 18 months!:eek:

Hi yes she is travelling with me. I guess under this I would need to change title deeds to protect my position? I wasn't sure if there was any way of doing this.

I am sure but one can never tell.

Jaguar_Skills

innovate wrote: »

Why do you have £26K in a 123 when it only pays interest on up to £20K? Do you have it split across 2 123s?

As to the extra money....TSB Plus 5% and Club Lloyds 4% will take £9K. You can do another £10K in good monthly savings accounts (First Direct, Club Lloyds, HSBC). At present, you still can get 3x£15K into BOS Vantage, but it is unclear how long that one will last.

Putting some into S&S ISA is ok if you can leave it in there for at least 5-7 years which it doesn't sound like you want to do.

There's apparently also a 3% 90 day notice cash ISA available at DotComUnity, or you could look into the Newcastle BS big home saver offerings - 3% on ISA and and non-ISA versions, and you can have them both in parallel (and they have nothing really to do with home savings). They are max £1,250 a month each but they don't expire after 12 months, like normal monthly savers do. Finally, I can think of the Nationwide 2.5% regular saver that allows you to put in £1K a month and doesn't expire after 12 months, either.

Plenty of cash savings choices for you. I have probably forgotten some.

EDIT: 'ere we go....forgot the Halifax Reward that pays you £60 a year for just following their rules.

Thanks Inovate.

TBH the reason I have 26k in there is because I just haven't sorted out another area to keep it yet.

As I said I am going in 8 weeks.

I will probably need to pull it from Santander anyway as I won't be paying anything in when I am travelling and you only get the 3% if you pay in £500 a month (i.e. wages). I will probably take the 26k and stick it in an easy access savings account so I can access if I need to whilst travelling.

innovate

Jaguar_Skills wrote: »

I will probably need to pull it from Santander anyway as I won't be paying anything in when I am travelling and you only get the 3% if you pay in £500 a month (i.e. wages). I will probably take the 26k and stick it in an easy access savings account so I can access if I need to whilst travelling.

Getting £500 a month into (and out of) the 123 is easy enough - - you just set up some SOs to bounce the money between the 123 and one of your other current accounts.

You also need to make sure that your DDs don't expire, which they would do it unused for 13 months. Again, this can easily be set up, e.g. with 2 Tesco DDs that pay once a year or so.

Leaving the money linger in a savings account would mean it will lose value since savings accounts pay you less than inflation.

Jaguar_Skills

So would you suggest keeping it in the Santander then rather than a savings account?

If I have any surplus after that i.e. the bonus is there somewhere else easy access that I could save it (at higher than inflation) so that I can get at it if I need to whilst travelling?

innovate

Up to you, really.....if I had the option of 1.25% AER or 3% AER, I know what I would choose. Though if you don't have qualifying cashback, you need to allow for the £24 annual fee on the 123. Still miles better than any savings account.

There aren't any easy access savings accounts that pay any decent interest - check for yourself on sites such as money.co.uk.

The ones with better interest are the current accounts that I already mentioned.