What to do with c£1k/month

[Dave.]

I was going to put this in the Intelligent Money thread, but that seems to be for, well, intelligent people.

My Premium Bonds are full, we have minimal outgoings per month and need somewhere to stash my cash rather than leaving it in my current account.

My original plan was to open a Marcus account, but 1.5% isn't a great deal, even in the 5th year of putting a grand a month in will only earn £900 interest. On £60k that's pretty wk.

I don't currently have an ISA but again, returns are minimal, unless I go for a S&S ISA.

I'm upping my pension contribution to the maximum my company will match so hopefully that will give me something later on in life.

Approaching 40 if that helps, no kids, bit of mortgage left, about £100k, would be nice to get rid of that ASAP, although we're overpaying as much as we can each year as it is.

What to do? Vanguard S&S ISA?

[Dave.]

davek_964 said:

This is a site about cars. If you have £1k a month spare, you don't own enough / the right cars.

4 at the minute, just finished having the usual done on the MX5, the others have fresh MoTs and recent services.... Even my bank account let out a sigh of relief....

[Dave.]

Cheers chaps.

Still a low rate tax payer, and I can dip into the current work pension at 55 (25% lump). I have another pension from a previous employer, latest statement says they'll be giving me £250 a month. (Not bad to say I've not paid I to it for 15-20yrs and left shortly after it started.)

I'll do some sums tonight and work out what I'll have in the pot in 15yrs to see what that 25% would/could be.

Thank again.

[Dave.]

Her PBs are full too, self-employed all her life, zero pension, but she's an only child and her folks have enough to see her through. So she's sorted in that respect. Plus I have life insurance through work, and I'm her biggest expense so she'll be better off when I'm dead....

[Dave.]

Current thinking after all the replies here is as much as I can comfortably into my pension, and anything leftover into a low to medium risk ISA.

Thanks for the insight chaps, very much appreciated.

[Dave.]

Good point, obviously that's a complete unknown & neither of them are business tycoons, but i have no real idea of their worth.

[Dave.]

princeperch said:

I'd recommend having a kid - you can have a right laugh with them and they also are more than happy to soak up any excess liquidity you might have.

fk.

That.

[Dave.]

Safe, instant access, and a small glimmer of hope of winner £25 every month.

[Dave.]

Cheers Phooey, that did cross my mind yesterday when looking at the history of the FTSE and Dow Jones graphs.

Think I'll hold off a couple of months and see if it does drop, then I'll be on it like a tramp on chips.

[Dave.]

Just upped my pension to 16% + 8% from work....

Rest is going into Markus, and transfer to a S&S ISA every few months once I've built up a bit of a slush....

Cheers again for the input.

[Dave.]

Just a little update, I put my first £1500 in 3 Vanguard funds last week, the 20%, 60% and 100%.

About £6 up so far.

This time next year, Rodney....

[Dave.]

For now, yes.

I'm going to be putting some in a different fund in the near future, so may ditch one or two of the other ones, or just leave them with the initial £500 in and concentrate on others.

ETA - I'm thinking of something along the lines of having one of the funds as a short term (year or two), a mid term (5 to 10) and a long term (20+).

Whether or not that happens is yet to be seen.

Edited by Dave. on Tuesday 24th September 11:25

[Dave.]

We can only over pay by a certain percentage, which we have done.

Current rate ends in a year or two, at which time it will be paid off, partially by whatever is left of the Vanguard funds.

[Dave.]

rockin said:

Yeah, but you could be squeezing some useful tax efficiency out of that. i.e. Perhaps the folks suppressing 40% IHT at the same time SWMBO was pocketing tax relief from the government and working towards a nice tax free lump sum.

Can you repeat that for a dumbass please?

[Dave.]

Thanks for that, appreciate it.

I don't think they're worth quite that much, I assume the 40% applies to amounts over £325k as per income tax.

I'll mention it to her tonight as see, it's not really for me to tell her parents to hand over a bundle of cash