What to do with current £40k savings plus £1000 a month

JT1000

Hi

Moneysaving newbie here. I've been reading the posts and articles across the site to get some ideas on how I can put my money to better use.

Currently me and my wife have the following accounts:

Halifax instant access ISA paying 0.8% which has £25,000 in.

Nationwide ISA paying 1.5% which has £15,000 in.

Plus two current account, Halifax reward account and lloyds normal current account.

So currently we have £40,000 in savings and can save about £1000 a month.

So what we are thinking is to close the Halifax ISA and put £20,000 in a Santander 123 account. The other £5,000 in a lloyds club current account.

Keep the Halifax reward account open to get the £60 a year. And finally put the £1000 a month into the Nationwide ISA.

How does that sound? Any ideas welcome if you think I'm missing a trick.

Thanks

YorkshireBoy

Santander would be way down my list, unless I could generate more than £5 a month in DD cashback.

How about:

£6K in TSB making 5%
£7.5K in Nationwide (albeit for only a year) making 5%
£15K in Club Lloyds making 4%
That takes care of £28.5K
Put the rest in BoS Vantage accounts (which will take up to £30K in total), or Tesco which will take £12K in total.

As to your £1K per month, then (for ease)...

£250 each into 2 x 5% TSB regular savers
£250 each into 2 x 4% Club Lloyds regular savers (topping up to £400 a month by depleting the funds in the 3% paying current accounts...known as drip-feeding)

Higher paying regular savers are available (6% at FD, M&S, and HSBC), but you may feel 3 more current accounts (necessary for access to the regular savers) is too much!

And finally(!), opening another 2 Reward accounts will make another £120 a year in Reward payments.

JT1000

Thanks for the suggestions Yorkshire Boy.

So just to confirm when you mention for example 15k in club lloyds do you mean 15k across 3 accounts, as I thought anything above 5k doesn't gain any interest.

Also with the extra halifax reward accounts would one have to be in my wife's names and one joint?

I will crunch some numbers and see how it works out against my initial ideas.

Futuristic

http://bankaccountsavings.co.uk

jimjames

What's the money for? Does it all need to be cash or can any be invested or added for pension?

JT1000

jimjames wrote: »

What's the money for? Does it all need to be cash or can any be invested or added for pension?

I'd be open to any ideas regarding investing some of it. I'm just looking to get a better return on it, rather than keeping it in low interest ISA. Thanks

darkidoe

JT1000 wrote: »

I'd be open to any ideas regarding investing some of it. I'm just looking to get a better return on it, rather than keeping it in low interest ISA. Thanks

How old are you and your wife? What are your short-term, medium term and long term goals? Any debt, mortgage, dependents, pensions? What is the risk profile you are willing to take in terms of investing?

There are many options out there to make your savings work harder for you, but it all depends on your particular circumstances. If your more suited to savings, YorkshireBoy has suggested a decent plan as above. What i would say is start doing the simple things by optimizing your saving accounts and then you can start thinking about more about long-term strategies.

Eco_Miser

JT1000 wrote: »

So just to confirm when you mention for example 15k in club lloyds do you mean 15k across 3 accounts, as I thought anything above 5k doesn't gain any interest.

Also with the extra halifax reward accounts would one have to be in my wife's names and one joint?

Yes, for both Lloyds and Halifax you'd have 3 accounts, one each for you and your wife, and one joint.

jennifernil

Excellent suggestions and pretty much what we are doing.

Gave up on ISAs 3 years back.

If interest rates ever recover, with the now much higher ISA limits, you could have it all back in ISAs within a couple of years.

YorkshireBoy

JT1000 wrote: »

So just to confirm when you mention for example 15k in club lloyds do you mean 15k across 3 accounts

I've taken into account there are two of you for all providers/accounts/amounts shown in my post.

JT1000

darkidoe wrote: »

How old are you and your wife? What are your short-term, medium term and long term goals? Any debt, mortgage, dependents, pensions? What is the risk profile you are willing to take in terms of investing?

There are many options out there to make your savings work harder for you, but it all depends on your particular circumstances. If your more suited to savings, YorkshireBoy has suggested a decent plan as above. What i would say is start doing the simple things by optimizing your saving accounts and then you can start thinking about more about long-term strategies.

Me and my wife are in our early thirties with 2 kids. Still have just under 100k on the mortgage. My fixed rate comes to an end in a few months and I'm looking to remortgage and shorten the lengthen so I can make larger monthly payments. I can still save £1000 a month after doing this. No other debts and I pay into a company pension.

Risk appetite would be medium, I wouldn't want to get into anything high risk.

Medium term goal is to pay off the mortgage and long term is hopefully retire early.