Money help please.

[KathySeldon]

Not aibu but need advice please.
I have a secret ‘escape’ fund that dh doesn’t know about. I have just dumped £16k into an isa.
but.
dh has asked me to put £20k from a joint policy that has just matured.
what do I do?

I only have £4k left of my isa allowance. I can’t put £20k in.
help.
I don’t want to go into marriage details, please can we keep this financial. Thank you.

Put the 4k in the isa and move the £16k from you husband into a high interest account.

I'm not a financial advisor.

Could you add £4k to the ISA, to make it "his" and then invest the remainder into secret premium bonds ?

I am not a financial advisor.

@BooFestiveTulip Are you a financial adviser? 😆

Yep, this is what I would do.

If husband could ask to see the bank statement, if you change banks and transfer the 16k into the new bank, then it would have the date of the transfer rather than the date that you first put it in. You'd need to have a plausible story for why it's in two chunks (the 16k and the 4k) though.

If it is a flexible ISA, you can take the £16k out, put it somewhere else non-ISA. Then put all £20k in.

Check if the iSA you have is a flexible ISA.

Just put it in a normal savibgs account. Unless you're a higher rate taxpayer you have the £1k savings allowance which means you don't pay tax on the interest anyway. Or maybe consider premium bonds if you would pay tax on your savings.

Do you have a premium bond account? Can you move your 16k there?

Thanks everyone.
I think what I'll do is like pp's have said. Get dh to transfer the £20k into my bank account, then add £4k to my isa and make it his. Then stick the £16k into the highest interest saving account I can find.
God, I just panicked for a bit when he said all this.
Mumsnet can be a really great sounding board at times.

I don't have enough to save, but can you only have one ISA?

You can have as many as you want, but the cap goes across all of them

It's only 16th April, have you used this year's allowance already?
It's £20k per tax year

Otherwise do some research - you can get higher interest rates outside an ISA eg I've got a bond at 5.5% you'll be lucky to get over 4% on an ISA

Hang on, if a woman finds out that her husband is hiding money then everyone will rightly be up in arms tell her to go after her fair share in a divorce! I get a small fund for escaping an abusive partner, but this goes beyond that. Do you intend to come clean about it and allow it to become part of the eventual divorce settlement when you have escaped?