What to do with inheritance - ideas please

[BoyMeetsWorld]

Hi, sorry for another inheritance thread but I'm a bit clueless. I will be booking to see a FA but I really don't trust them not to be biased in some way so I'd welcome other opinions too.

We've inherited circa 65k.

We already own a property with still approx 315k to pay on the mortgage. It's big but not our dream forever home. We've done a lot of work to it - added around 50k value through extension work already, but We've spent 40k to achieve that so not much profit & are in 2 minds about a loft conversion...that's one of the possible uses of some of the money. I'd also really like to fully recarpet and refloorboard upstairs and get the whole house painted - not sure cost of That, maybe about 10k?

My husband and I both earn decent amounts and are on ok pension schemes with at least 30 years to go until we need them. Our retirement worries me a lot eg how We'll afford to maintain our standard of life although I'd have no issue at all with downsizing or even moving to a much cheaper area of the country at that point...im not at all sentimental with property and places. I don't trust pension schemes these days to still be around when we retire so I don't know how best to use this money to help with that - should we be investing? Or buying to let (is it even enough money to do that or would we end up with actually more debt from 2 mortgages)?

We have 2 kids who are going to need funding through uni etc. they do have savings accounts but will be nowhere near the required amount. So that's a possible consideration too.

So much to think about, 65k actually isn't that much and I doubt We'll get any more windfalls now so want to make the right choices.

Any thoughts at all very welcome.

If it was me, it would go straight into my offset mortgage savings account which means that the whole £65k is working for us while we dither over whether to pay down the capital, make pension contributions, pay into ISAs , etc.

If you haven’t maximised your pension contributions for the full tax relief available, now is the time to do it. It’s a no brainer really.

If you need access to some money, well £40k can go into your ISA allowances for the year.

Similarly for your DC, the JISA allowance is £4260 each this tax year.

Then you can also open SIPPs for your DC and put £2880 pa (grossed up to £3600 pa by tax relief).

Obviously, money put into pensions won’t be accessed until 55 but there is no guarantee that the tax relief will remain in the future.

With normal ISAs, any gains are tax free but at least you can sell funds/shares and access the money immediately.

I would allocate amounts into savings & pension first and house expenditure last rather than the other way round simply because, once you put the money into e.g an ISA, the reality is that you probably won’t sell it unless it was a real emergency. (I’ve only sold some holdings within an ISA to reinvest some gains into something else).

Read the financial sections of the weekend papers regularly - you won’t need a financial advisor.