What to do with Small Pot?

Cptralls

Hi All, 

I posted something some time ago but since Covid-19 I've taken my eye off the ball and I wanted to know where to properly hold my money. My wife and I are hoping to buy a house in the new year and I want to have £20k  minimum for my share of the deposit. I basically for now want my money to work as hard as possible, details are as follows:

HSBC Current Account - £1000

HSBC Regular Saver - £2250 - 5%

Nationwide Current account - £0, regular saver just matured. 

First Direct ISA - £7000 - 0.55%

First Direct Regular Saver - £2700 - 5%

M&S Regular Saver - £2250 - 5%

TSB - £1700 - 3%

Premium Bonds - £200

Funding Circle - £200 - stopped reinvesting and hope to drip feed this out. 

Coventry Regular Saver - 2.5% - £800

I am also due £10000 from a delayed redundancy payment which should be concluded by June 2020.

colsten

With interest rates heading towards zero, and assuming you want your money in Jan/Feb 2021, there's not an awful lot you can do. Assuming you are a basic rate tax payer, you have £1,000 Personal Savings Allowance, so the cash ISA doesn't do anything useful for you. You could get a bit more if you ditched the ISA and put £4K of the money into a LISA (assuming you are entitled and a first-time buyer), and the rest of the money into an instant access, or perhaps a short-term notice account. There might also be some other Regular Savers that you can make use of. 

https://moneyfacts.co.uk/ should help you find the best instant access account. HL Active Savings and Raisin are also worth a look, especially for Notice accounts. Regular Saver list is in https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6106986/regular-savings-accounts-the-best-currently-available-list.

kinger101

Assuming you're not eligible for LISA, otherwise I'd start there.  
Looks like you're doing about all you can.  Maximize the regular savers.  After that, I'd keep the rest in one place because the negligible difference in the very small interest rates means it's not worth the effort.  Marcus or NS&I.

Cptralls

Unfortunately due to owning a house I'm not eligible for the LISA. 

Albermarle

No mention of pension provision/contributions ?

Alexland

Cptralls said:

Unfortunately due to owning a house I'm not eligible for the LISA. 

Well technically you can have a LISA and use it to invest to withdraw at age 60+ just not for a penalty free property purchase withdrawal. So are you looking to build a deposit for a second home (with the extra stamp duty) or just something to add to the proceeds from selling your current house?

tommyedinburgh

Got something similar going on (4x regular savers) and other small bits and pieces currently totalling £20k, decided I’m going to fire it all into my premium bonds because I’m feeling lucky. 

Cptralls

tommyedinburgh said:

Got something similar going on (4x regular savers) and other small bits and pieces currently totalling £20k, decided I’m going to fire it all into my premium bonds because I’m feeling lucky. 

That crossed my mind this morning and may well be a serious contender. 

tommyedinburgh

Cptralls said:

tommyedinburgh said:

Got something similar going on (4x regular savers) and other small bits and pieces currently totalling £20k, decided I’m going to fire it all into my premium bonds because I’m feeling lucky. 

That crossed my mind this morning and may well be a serious contender. 

I think given the current interest rates available it makes more sense than in the past, especially if you look forward to checking the app each draw date - which we do in our household. Between 2017-2019 before we had renovation work done in the house we had £20k and returned well above average winnings, I'd need to check but I recall it being something like 4.5% which we were delighted with. My young daughter in particular was lucky.

Cptralls

tommyedinburgh said:

Cptralls said:

tommyedinburgh said:

Got something similar going on (4x regular savers) and other small bits and pieces currently totalling £20k, decided I’m going to fire it all into my premium bonds because I’m feeling lucky. 

That crossed my mind this morning and may well be a serious contender. 

I think given the current interest rates available it makes more sense than in the past, especially if you look forward to checking the app each draw date - which we do in our household. Between 2017-2019 before we had renovation work done in the house we had £20k and returned well above average winnings, I'd need to check but I recall it being something like 4.5% which we were delighted with. My young daughter in particular was lucky.

I think that's what I am going to do too.

tommyedinburgh

Bit the bullet and decided to head into Virgin Money on Tuesday to withdrawal the funds from my ‘Offline’ accounts to put into my Premium Bonds.