£15,000 investment/savings advice please

Phoenix1988

Hello,


This is my first time posting into a forum so apologies if any of these question have been answered previously.


My fianc! and I are going to be gifted £15,000 as a wedding gift in the new year and we were hoping for some advice as to where best to invest/savings option - bonds/ISA's etc.


So for a bit of background - we bought our house last year with a 40 year (long I know) mortgage. The basis for this was that we are both young, at the beginning of our careers and on our lowest salaries we will ever be, so as the salary builds up we can over pay/ move into another house with a shorter mortgage term. - should we invest the full amount/some of the £15,000 into reducing out mortgage (by my calculations it would knock off approx. 9 years)


We are keen travellers and was thinking of putting £3,000 aside as a travel buffer to top up any big trips we can quite afford. Having said that we are very good at saving and don't really live outside of our means this buffer would only get used once for our CostaRica trip in 2016.


So, even if we did take some out for a travel buffer, we would still be left with approx. £12K is this lump sum best off in an ISA, a bond (we can put away for max 3 years before we are looking to move house again) or invest in something entirely different?


Any help or advice at all would be greatly appreciated


Best wishes


Phoenix1988

Archi_Bald

If you want to spend some/all of the money in 0-3 years, you should keep it in cash savings. The best interest rates are presently in various current accounts, all of which feature on the forum. Don't bother with cash ISAs.

Phoenix1988

Archi_Bald wrote: »

If you want to spend some/all of the money in 0-3 years, you should keep it in cash savings. The best interest rates are presently in various current accounts, all of which feature on the forum. Don't bother with cash ISAs.

Thanks for the quick response! What would be the best options for locking the money away for 5-10 years? I know absolutely nothing about investing in any shares but I do know it will need to be over an extended period of time.


I'm not sure if it would be best to plough it all into property though or try and invest into something for the long term for a return


Thanks

ColdIron

Phoenix1988 wrote: »

we can put away for max 3 years before we are looking to move house again

Phoenix1988 wrote: »

What would be the best options for locking the money away for 5-10 years?

The answers to your questions will vary greatly depending on whether you are looking at less than 3 years or 5 to 10

Phoenix1988

ColdIron wrote: »

The answers to your questions will vary greatly depending on whether you are looking at less than 3 years or 5 to 10

That's the tough question, do we take the money in 3 years and buy a bigger house or wait it out more than 5 years and invest the money instead. A Personal choice I know, but without knowing all of the options i'm struggling to make that decision. I am currently leaning towards the 5-10 years investing for a bigger return and put the house move on the back burner for that period

somethingcorporate

Well that's a personal decision you need to make. You should base the decision on whether you want to move or not rather than what investment returns you would get different between 3 and 10 years.

None of your timelines seem long enough to suggest investing is a good option, chances are over a short to medium time frame you could lose money.

I'd stick to cash ISAs for now and give yourself the option of moving when you want to.

xylophone

In the short term use high interest current accounts. You could have a sole account each and a joint in Nationwide Flexdirect -(5% available for a year) you will need to cycle in £1000 monthly from a non NW account- you could have a sole account each and a joint Club Lloyds account- presumably you have DDs - otherwise two Tesco savings accounts can be used.

You could use a Santander 123 account as your main joint account.

enjoyyourshoes

9 years off your mortgage, sound appealing. Also it will save you buckets of interest payments (the online tool will tell you how much)Could then use ALL of your mortgage monthly payments to invest in your future (Pension etc) ?

colsten

somethingcorporate wrote: »

I'd stick to cash ISAs for now and give yourself the option of moving when you want to.

Cash ISAs appear to be the worst choice of all possible choices in the current interest rate climate and with just £15K in hand.

OP and partner can easily get 5% on £6,000 and 4% on £10,000. None of which an ISA could beat after BR tax. OP and partner could also possibly get a couple of 6% Regular Savings accounts, to drip feed from their high interest current accounts.