Any advice gratefully received!

Cactus25

Aegis wrote: »

Stop wasting money on the lottery and get your wife to start declaring her her self-employed income. You'll probably end up ahead just by doing both of those things. It will also make you more appealing to any financial adviser you decide to approach - announcing to a regulated individual that you are a tax evader is unlikely to make for a comfortable first conversation.



Once you've looked at both of those things, start investing seriously. The £250 a month currently wasted on the lottery could be directed elsewhere, but in reality with the sort of salary you are on you probably want to be investing a huge chunk towards buying a house to live in (don't think of it as an investment, think of it as a great way to save on rent) and paying into pensions for retirement. When you have an idea of where you plan to buy and how much it is going to cost and have allocated cash towards achieving that goal, get the mortgage, pay the monthly repayment, look at what you have left over after paying other household costs and contributions towards annual expenses (e.g. holidays) and consider investing most of the rest either into the mortgage if you are low risk or into a diversified investment portfolio if you are minded more towards higher risks. If you prefer investment properties, then go for that, but be aware that you'll need to treat that as a business rather than an investment, and it will magnify any losses you might worry about due to housing bubbles as you'll have concentrated a lot of your wealth into one place.


Obviously the usual warning applies - this is just food for thought and not personal advice.

Thanks Aegis.
The house etc we live in comes with our job, so if we bought a property we wouldn't be living it. It would purely be an investment / somewhere to go if we got sacked.


I'm young (ish) so figure I'm happy to go for a high risk strategy, I've got time to reign it in later in life and be more cautious in my 30s and 40s!



We saw a mortgage broker a few months ago who said with a 60k deposit we should look for a property of 600k. There is the help to buy scheme in London for a 30k deposit for a 600k home and a large government equity loan I believe. However as we want to rent the property out this isn't suitable. He said however if we were to live in it, and make huge over payments on the mortgage we could be in a great position at the end of the 5 years when the equity loan starts needing repayments. Re-mortgate then swallow up the equity loan. As I said though this isn't suitable given that we want to rent out the property. I definitely left that meeting with the distinct feeling that he was subtly suggesting we rent the property under the HTB scheme and this certainly isn't rare.


I'm sure that will infuriate this thread somewhat more.


How would I go about declaring a cash income?

Comms69

Cactus25 wrote: »

Thanks Aegis.
The house etc we live in comes with our job, so if we bought a property we wouldn't be living it. It would purely be an investment / somewhere to go if we got sacked.


I'm young (ish) so figure I'm happy to go for a high risk strategy, I've got time to reign it in later in life and be more cautious in my 30s and 40s!



We saw a mortgage broker a few months ago who said with a 60k deposit we should look for a property of 600k. There is the help to buy scheme in London for a 30k deposit for a 600k home and a large government equity loan I believe. However as we want to rent the property out this isn't suitable. He said however if we were to live in it, and make huge over payments on the mortgage we could be in a great position at the end of the 5 years when the equity loan starts needing repayments. Re-mortgate then swallow up the equity loan. As I said though this isn't suitable given that we want to rent out the property. I definitely left that meeting with the distinct feeling that he was subtly suggesting we rent the property under the HTB scheme and this certainly isn't rare.


I'm sure that will infuriate this thread somewhat more.


How would I go about declaring a cash income?

Well renting it out and having it as somewhere to live should you lose your job are mutually exclusive. If you rent it out, you cant just move back in...


Declare via self assessment

DrSyn

Does anyone else get the feeling that Cactus25 is having a joke & attempting an Xmas wind up?

Mr_Costcutter

DrSyn wrote: »

Does anyone else get the feeling that Cactus25 is having a joke & attempting an Xmas wind up?

You are not alone

dont_use_vistaprint

le_loup wrote: »

No, It's fine.
I'm more than happy to pay for the public services that you enjoy. Don't give it another thought.

Its sad, but increasingly common in many towns up and down the country nowday's for people to register as self employed often have cash sales of 20-30k making cakes, doing nails, hairdressing, dog walking, plumbing, painting etc, declare a pittance if anything and then claim another 10k or so in tax credits. Its much easier than finding semi-skilled work locally and with so many unskilled jobs now zero hours, this type of employment isnt really secure enough for people with families anymore. The government have created a huge grey economy in the SME sector that is going to continue to grow

Cactus25

steampowered wrote: »

To be honest if you just open a stocks & shares ISA and pick a Vanguard fund - that is all you need to know.

Thanks steampowered!


I believe I cant open another ISA if I have a HTB ISA, is that correct?


I guess really I should see a financial advisor as many have suggested, and decide whether we should just do away with the HTB ISA and switch to a stocks and shares ISA.


2 more questions if I may:

With a stocks and shares ISA, do I need to declare the amounts and profit/losses to HMRC?
The ISA limit is 20k per person i believe, does that mean a joint account can be 40k? or would it need to be 2 separate accounts of 20ks per annum?

le_loup

I-S-A.
INDIVIDUAL Savings Account.
For someone as clever as you appear to be, it looks like you need to do some research yourself. It ain't hard these days, what with the internet and all.

Cactus25

le_loup wrote: »

I-S-A.
INDIVIDUAL Savings Account.
For someone as clever as you appear to be, it looks like you need to do some research yourself. It ain't hard these days, what with the internet and all.

Ha I'm certainly not clever!


Its the internet and all that which led me here asking seemingly inane questions :rotfl:


So with a stocks and shares ISA, do I need to declare the amounts and profit/losses to HMRC? or is it somehow all done automatically?

Herbalus

No need to tell anybody about what happens in an ISA.

Apart from online forums. It’s mandatory to report back here with your ISA profits if you’re evading tax.

eskbanker

Cactus25 wrote: »

I believe I cant open another ISA if I have a HTB ISA, is that correct?

No, as per https://www.gov.uk/individual-savings-accounts:

There are 4 types of ISA:

• cash ISAs
• stocks and shares ISAs
• innovative finance ISAs
• Lifetime ISAs

You can put money into one of each kind of ISA each tax year.

(Help To Buy ISA being a subset of cash ISA)