Best way to invest/spend £60k

[DisneyBaby]

Husband and I have £60k savings and want to invest it wisely instead of leaving if in the savings account. What should we do?

We originally thought about buying a holiday home in Devon and using this as a deposit but holiday let mortgages seem to be 3/4% interest rate and so we wouldn't make much profit after paying for a mortgage and bills and cleaner/maintenance etc...

Then we thought perhaps buy a standard buy to let as we already own one and profit £600 a month from it so we know we could make a little income from it if we bought something similar.

But the problem with this is that we would like to move house in the next couple of years and are going to get stung with a hefty stamp duty bill when we move. We're not sure if we should keep our existing buy to let or sell it soon to avoid the higher stamp duty, so buying a second buy to let or property might just complicate things further re moving...

Any ideas or advice please?

The stamp duty excess charge is only payable on 2nd (or more) properties - you won’t pay it on buying and selling your new property.

Appreciate you want more advice than this but other than that I’m not sure!

@Dammitthisisshit

The stamp duty excess charge is only payable on 2nd (or more) properties - you won’t pay it on buying and selling your new property.

Appreciate you want more advice than this but other than that I’m not sure!

So currently we own a rental property, just a small flat and then we have own our own home that we live in. If we keep our maisonette and sell our current house to move to a bigger home, I believe we will have to pay the higher stamp duty on the new residential home because it will be considered a 2nd property as we'll still have the rental flat? I don't think they take into consideration whether it'll be your main residence or not. Is that correct?

Can you look into stocks and shares ISAs? You could get 20k each in there before end of March then the rest in the new tax year.

Spread across 8-10 different funds just in case and make sure you're in a wide range of industries / geographical areas.

We use the Santander investment portal but I'm sure Martin Lewis would have a basics guide.

You could throw it into your pension, or use it to live on whilst you salary sacrifice the equivalent in wages over a period of time? This will save you income tax, and benefit from a good growth plan.

If you are selling your primary main residence you will only be liable for normal stamp duty on the purchase of your new main primary residence .
Your buy to let isn't your primary main residence so stamp duty is payable at normal rates on your new purchase

Put it as much as you can in an ISA and invest the ISA in an ETF (exchange traded fund) which is a general fund that tracks the stock market. that is much safer than individual investments. Keep the rest in a regular savings account and move it over to the ISA each year to max your ISA allowance.

look at Nutmeg.com and Vanguard for examples.

there are fancy brokers like Hargreaves-Landsdown too but they charge more and don't necessarily do better than Vanguard.

don't invest in property especially if this is a short-term investment. Property is an iliquid investment (hard to sell fast) and it is high-risk to have all your money in one place.