newbie investment advice

chacha5520

I'm really hopin so me of you very clever saving/investment peeps can offer me some advice. We plan to see an If a shortly but would like to go a bit clued up!
Partner and I about to exchange on a house purchase. After costs we should have about 7 left in a cash isa account currently earning little interest (I know it needs to be transferred). This will be our accessible emergency fund.

Sadly partners mum died a few months ago so he is due to inherit about 150k. We wamt to make very best use of it. These are some of the thibgs we woukd like to do:-
We want to pay down some of the mortgage when we can by overpaying.
We need to spend about 50k on the house (it's a bit of a fixer upper).
We want to invest some for our 3 year old daughter for a future fund.
Partner doesn't use his isa allowance and doesn't earn enough to pay tax.
We haven't got any shares isas.
We would lock some of it away but can't take big risks with it.
We are open to any ideas really... where do we start?
Thanks v much in advance.

kidmugsy

For the nipper, scroll down to pp 50, 51 on
http://www.theaic.co.uk/sites/default/files/statistics/attachment/AICStats31Jul14.pdf

For you, ensure that you contribute enough to a pension to get the maximum employer contribution.

Get your man to open interest-bearing current accounts in his own name and in joint names. You can get 5%, 4%, 3% gross per annum that way, tax-free in his case as long as he completes an R85 form for each account.

Overpaying: is the interest rate on the mortgage high enough that this is a sensible move?
Are you aiming to get a lower interest rate when you eventually remortgage by virtue of a lower LTV? If that's your aim, would that influence the sort of mortgage you sign up for now?

£50k on the house: so be it.

S&S: here views will differ. Some people will announce that it is impossible to time the market so just bung some money into equities. I am more cautious. The "just bung it in" school is probably right when either (i) you are investing month after month out of surplus income, or (ii) when the stock market doesn't seem very overvalued. The trouble is that at the moment Wall St does look very overvalued and there might be a risk that if it crashes it will bring other markets down with it. Of course, that might resolve itself in the course of a few months anyway.

While you wait buy a book: John Kay's "The Long and the Short of it: Finance and investment for normally intelligent people who are not in the industry (2009)". Additionally, for an entertaining and free education from a firm that goes in for cautious investing, look at the reports and the quarterly reports at http://www.patplc.co.uk

You'll laugh, you'll smile, and you'll end up a bit the wiser.

chacha5520

Thanks so much kidmugsy I will investigate those links and check out the book. I just want to make sure we are making the most of the money.

Good point about overpaying on mortgage our Ltv is already below 60% and rate fixed for 4 years on 2.99% so keeping money in higher rate paying current accounts would make more sense.

I don't currently have any employer pension contributions but that will change next year. I could pay in more myself though. Partner not paying into any personal pension plan.

Thanks for your help, I've got somewhere to start now.

Thanks v much