Author Topic: Feeling positive - what next?  (Read 1675 times)

Uk newbie

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Feeling positive - what next?
« on: May 22, 2015, 01:42:51 AM »
Hi,

Recently discovered the site/forum and am feeling motivated to get organised.

I'm 35, my wife 33 and we have 2 young children.

Between us we earn circa $220k/ year.

We have a property with a value of $360k and have an 8 year mortgage of $180k. We have no car/credit card debt and $50,000 in the bank. We both pay the maximum into our pensions.

Having completed some home renovations and with no big costs expected in the coming months, our expectation is we'll have $3000+ a month to save/invest. Our mortgage is at a low 1.99% so paying that off early doesn't seem the best use of cash necessarily.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd appreciate it.

Two9A

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Re: Feeling positive - what next?
« Reply #1 on: May 22, 2015, 03:59:38 AM »
You call yourself a UK Newbie, and it just so happens I'm in the same boat. What I've done so far is set up an S&S ISA with one of the direct-investment places (I'm at Interactive Investor, but I'm told Cavendish have slightly lower trading fees), and the ISA contains a Vanguard LifeStrategy fund. You get to choose the rough balance of bonds/stocks you'd like, and Vanguard do the hard work of rebalancing the particular components for you.

So that gets you to £15,240 per year (the allowance rises each year); your mortgage is indeed not at a high enough rate to pay down instead of investing the extra, so you might want to look into setting up a SIPP or opening a taxable trading account, and putting more Vanguard in those. You're probably already aware, but a SIPP or other pension scheme can't be accessed until you're 55 years old, which may affect your decision as to whether to keep much money in there (I don't have a pension at all, for example).

Hope that helps

2lazy2retire

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Re: Feeling positive - what next?
« Reply #2 on: May 22, 2015, 06:26:53 AM »
For UK residents I think  the following is a great blog - http://monevator.com/ - great investment advice with an early retirement slant. Kind of a combination of  JL Collins and MMM.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2015, 06:28:43 AM by 2lazy2retire »