Initial savings and what’s next?

mrklaw

We have a few little pots of savings and want to review where we are, and where we go next to avoid wasting what we have by leaving it in poor paying savings accounts.

Married, both in late 40s, looking at restructuring savings to be efficient.

- we have a Santander 123 which is hitting its £20k ceiling
- about £8k in a Scottish widows stocks isa, paying in £100 pm (we did withdraw about £15k a few years ago worrying about Brexit and that’s now in the Santander)
- another £10k in general savings accounts earning probably sod all (split between my wife and I)

Mortgage is low interest rate so not sure we want to pay that down right now. We are about to hit ‘children going through uni’ phase which will impact what we can save per month but hopefully will still have a few hundred we can save

We’ve reworked our budget and can save around £1000pm and would like some general advice:
- what level of instant access savings should we aim for? We probably can manage for 12 months with what we have now, which feels enough and why we’re looking at maybe doing more
- whats The next phase? Do we look at fixed term savings account, or stocks ISA or something else? Don’t mind if it has to stay somewhere for a while to even out bumps etc

Not necessarily looking for specific recommendations (but will take them..), more about how we should look at structuring things.

Zero_Sum

For starters downgrade your 123 to lite & move all the cash to Marcus, cos once you factor in the additional £4 fee, the effective rate isnt that great.

Then you could look at drip feeding to regular savers

Alexland

How are your pensions looking?

mrklaw

Alexland wrote: »

How are your pensions looking?

Hmm. I have a final salary from Nokia back in the day, plus a few random tiny others. Now in a workplace pension with just basic contributions. Should be fine from an overall contributions for state pension.

Wife took a long time out with kids but worked before and is now working (with workplace pension for a few years). So probably she’ll be just about ok for state pension and a little workplace on top.

It’s a good thing to think about be perhaps feels a bit early to top up as the money isn’t accessible? At least for 5-6 years once both kids are both through Uni and finances are more ‘known’