First time buyers

Rich12533 · 9 November 2018 at 11:23PM

Hi everyone,

New to the site and looking for a little advice. My wife and I have saved £30k for our first house deposit. Currently, I am waiting to be relocated with my job, however I do not know when that will be 6 month-18 months so we are waiting to buy.

I want to optimise our savings. I listen to Martins BBC podcast this week which talked about LISA and Help to buy ISA. My thought process is to opened a LISA each and put £1 in. Hopefully by April 5th I might have some more info on my relocation. Put £4k in each LISA pre April 5th and another £4k each after April 7th if I have info relocation will be a year after opening the accounts. Do you agree with this approach? (I understand H2B isa is more flexible, but LISA offers more reward) Also, if we buy a house 12 months after opening the account and its only been 9 months since depositing the 2nd £4k do we still get 25% or is it pro rata?

Any recommendations on what to do with the other £14k would be welcomed. (Currently in flexi saver earning 0.2%!!!)

Thanks in advance.

Zorillo · 9 November 2018 at 11:41PM

Your plan makes sense and you'd get the full 25% on both deposits so you'd have £10k plus interest to use after the account had been open one year.

It's stating the obvious, but if you have opened the account with £1 you can only put a further £3999 in prior to April 5th.

kidmugsy · 9 November 2018 at 11:47PM

Rich12533 wrote: »

Any recommendations on what to do with the other £14k would be welcomed. (Currently in flexi saver earning 0.2%!!!)

Three FlexDirect current accounts at Nationwide and (if you are feeling brave) four current accounts at TSB.

Alexland · 10 November 2018 at 7:29AM

Zorillo wrote: »

Your plan makes sense and you'd get the full 25% on both deposits so you'd have £10k plus interest to use after the account had been open one year.

It's stating the obvious, but if you have opened the account with £1 you can only put a further £3999 in prior to April 5th.

Really good point we had someone on the forum have their £4k contribution rejected in March as it put them £1 over the annual limit.

Alex

george4064 · 10 November 2018 at 9:00AM

Have a thorough read of this page which has loads of information on various saving/current accounts to earn interest on your money: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/savings-accounts-best-interest

Rich12533 · 10 November 2018 at 9:15AM

Thank you for all the replies! I will start digging into some of the advice!

Wildsound · 10 November 2018 at 11:01AM

If your timescale to buy is over 2 years, then I would consider opening a HTB ISA as well to benefit from the highest cash ISA rate which will compound every year. When you come to buy the house, you would use the LISA to buy the property (thus not being hit by the penalty) and then you just close the HTB ISA at no penalty and just pocket the interest (you can't use both the LISA bonus and the HTB bonus at the same time per person)

Otherwise, as said above, start looking at high interest current accounts and monthly savers.

If you aim to buy is over 5 years, then consider a stocks and shares ISA, but that would need more research and I don't get the impression you are in this position anyways.

First time buyers

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