What to do with £15k

partialycloudy

Hi all,

I’m looking for some advice on saving approx 15k. My husband and I aren’t the best at saving- we tend to put money aside if we have a holiday booked for example but if we have nothing specific to save for, we put money aside which then gets dipped into.

Anyway I am being made redundant and with PILON, and redundancy I will be getting a years salary tax free. I have no plans to return to work for know but will be trying to set up my own business from home.

After paying off some debt, paying for some courses for myself and DH and paying off holidays we already had planned for this year, we will be left with about 22k. We would like to put at least £15k (possibly more) away so we can not dip into it to top up our living expenses!

We basically have savings accounts that came with our first direct account and nothing more!!

What is the best way to get the most from the £15k?

We don’t want easy access but we would like to be able to get to some of it for emergencies - DH losing his job for example.

We will have no debt apart from a mortgage, which we are locked into till 2020 and have a 3 year old. Whilst I’m not earning we will not be able save anything monthly until September when DDs free childcare kicks in.

Think that’s everything! Thx

eskbanker

partialycloudy wrote: »

if we have nothing specific to save for, we put money aside which then gets dipped into.

[...]

We would like to put at least £15k (possibly more) away so we can not dip into it to top up our living expenses!

[...]

We don’t want easy access but we would like to be able to get to some of it for emergencies - DH losing his job for example.

There's always going to be some sort of trade-off between your desire to have access but not too easy - one option might be a notice account, such as the 95 day one from Charter Savings Bank at 1.9%: http://www.chartersavingsbank.co.uk/Products/NoticeAccount.

Or you could split the money into genuinely no access for some and the rest accessible - pick the market-leading fixed rate for the duration you have in mind from https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/savings-accounts-best-interest/#fixedsavings and put the rest into a fixed rate cash ISA from https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/best-cash-isa/#fixed which would allow access but would penalise you for withdrawing early (to temper your willpower issues).