£12,000 where to save or invest ? Thoughts?

MRDOLLAR

Hi guys ,
Hope you can offer a little advice to us my wife and I.
We would like to put our £12,000 from a house sale equity somewhere safe and watch it grow.
We are nationwide flex plus account holders and our wages and this amount is in there currently.
What’s the best place to save or invest currently?
What would you do with £12,000 is an isa a good option ?
What savings account ?
What investment ?
Regards

ValiantSon

How safe is safe? If you mean that your capital cannot be at any risk then investments are not for you. If you are prepared to take some risk then you could look at opening an S&S ISA and investing in a multi-asset fund like Vanguard LifeStrategy,; HSBC Global Strategy; L&G Multi Index; or Blackrock Consensus, but do this only if you are prepared to stay invested for at least ten years. You stand a much better chance of good returns doing this than letting inflation erode thevalue of your money in a savings account.

If you aren't prepared to invest then it depends on whether you are prepared to lock your money away at all, and how long for. Given present interest rates I wouldn't bother doing more than one year at present, so you could consider OakNorth Bank's 1.82% fixed rate savings bond (which would give you £218.40 interest). You could then review this after a year and repeat in the best available fixed rate savings bond for another year.

However, for better returns, you could open interest paying current accounts, e.g. thress Tesco accounts (one joint and two single) paying 3% on £3,000 each, and put £1,500 in a TSB Classic Plus. Of course, if you haven't already had a Nationwide FlexDirect account then I'd suggest opening a joint and two single of them so as to get 5% interest for one year on £2,500 per account. The remaining £4,500 could go into two Tesco accounts. You could then have two Nationwide regular savers (one each) taking a combined £500 per month at 5%. If you do this, use the money in the Tesco accounts to fund the regular saver so that you are maximising the interest from the better paying Nationwide account. (Taking this latter approach would earn you £534 in interest).

Brynsam

Depends how old you are, whether you are higher rate tax payers, what you are saving for/your savings horizon (i.e. when you do want/think you will need to access the cash).

Clicking on the 'banking and saving' tab at the top of this web page will get you masses of helpful info.