Investment ideas

[Whammyyammy]

We've just completed probate on an inheritance from my husbands side. It's £350k split between him and his sister, so £175k.
We don't need it for housing etc as haveviwn home, so want to put it away towards retirement/clearing remaining mortgage at later date

With interest rates rising, has anyone found any good savings deals, oh mentioned 50k in premium bonds as you often win prizes, but I'm not convinced that's the best plan.

What pension and/or retirement planning have you done?

I've got quite a good private pension, plus my NHS one. Husband has been in military for 28 years, so that's a good pension and payable immediately upon leaving, which he's hoping to do soon and join civil service, which again has a good pension.

Personally we like PB's and both have the max (50K each) which gives a constant return (not guaranteed of course but it works out nicely) while having the money immediately available and you know it is safe.
Over and above that it is spread around in the usual places (ISA's, shares etc) which is not immediately available hence why PB's are handy.

@Dougieowner yes, tge pb prizes are attractive, part of the inheritance was from £50k pb, and looking through the statements, at least one win per month, albeit £25, but some 50 and 100 .
How accessible is the money once in bonds, took a while to release, but that was mainly probate

Our wider family have all pretty much maxed out on PB's and a combined husband & wife holding usually returns between £100-150pm (with an occasional slightly larger win). I don't think any of us have ever won more than a £500 single prize (although we live in hope!).
We have all of us used it at one time or another as a useful way of getting hold of cash in a hurry (house purchase etc) and I don't think any of us have ever had a problem getting the funds into our own bank ACC within 3-days
I did read on here recently that someone had problems and it took a couple of weeks to get access to the funds but none of us have suffered this.

We ended up investing £75k in Pb, 50 me, 25 oh.

That’s just savings, not investing. You don’t mention your age, and whether you’d like to retire early, or when your mortgage is due to be paid off, but you could have (and still can) put £20k each into an S&S ISA and leave it to grow for 5-10 years. And add potentially add further £20k each tax year. Your return in PBs is on average less than inflation.

I have to admit that much as we love PB's, with inflation now high they are not the best place to keep money long term.
When things settle down for us (we have recently moved home and I am about to take early retirement) we will be investing the majority of our savings and leave a smaller (but still very significant) amount in PB's