Advice please on investing quite a large sum

squidlydiddly2

I started getting the Martin Lewis emails almost from the very start and have had good advice from my few posts but I’m really not sure where to post this question so have posted in a couple of places on the forum!

I am 76, have been retired for 15 years, have carefully depleted my drawdown account to nil and now only have my state pension of £1k a month. My wife is 72 still has drawdown, a small NHS pension and state pension amounting to almost £1k a month. We have several one year cash investments maturing in late April amounting to £116k but this will still leave us with other cash still invested. We own our home which is worth around £400k which we put into a family trust for our son in 2014. We have also done all the usual powers of attorney, funeral plans etc to make things easier should things begin to go wrong.

When our son wanted to buy his first property 12 years ago the bank of mum and dad gave him and his partner £110k to help make his mortgage payments affordable. He has now sold the property, is moving abroad and wants to give us back the money! In all this means in April we have around £226k to invest somewhere. Stocks and shares are of no real interest to me at my age and interest rates are abysmal so my thoughts are moving towards buying a second property to let, as I expect prices to fall unless the chancellor keeps the stamp duty holiday, and this brings me to my questions.

Is this a sensible option, what would you advise? If property to let is a sensible option should we put our son down as owning part of the property, what are the tax consequences, can you claim the cost of the property against any income from it. There must be many more things we would need to take into account? Any proper advice would be most welcome. Thank you.

dunstonh

duplicate thread in pension section already getting replies.
Advice please on investing quite a large sum. — MoneySavingExpert Forum