@Pawtucketbrew I cannot give advice what to do specifically, as I do not know your full circumstances, but I can suggest to consider a few factors you may wish to consider:
-As a general rule, for most people it is beneficial to have an "emergency fund" of available cash before starting to invest, in case they have an unexpected expense. The size of this should take into account the amount of available money and the likely scenarios in which cash could be needed. For example, a person who drives to work and has an old, knackered car might want to consider putting aside cash for a car instead of investing it for anything other than the short term.
There are ways of getting some interest on the emergency fund, at very low risk, to partially offset inflation. For example, NS&I offers government-guaranteed savings accounts that can be withdrawn at any time with very little notice.
-Fees are very important for all investors because for whatever risk the investor accepts, the more fees are taken, the less return is left for the investor. For the pension as well as for the savings, make sure you know what all of the fees are. It should be possible to get all-in fees below 0.5% (including fund fees and platform fees) if you choose your own investments, even with a small amount such as £10k. In my personal opinion, anything over 1.5% (including fund fees, platform fees and advice fees) is definitely too much, even if you get advice of some sort (could even be so-called "robo-advice"), and below 1% may be a happy medium. Fees should be compared against the expected total return rather than against the size of the asset pool. So for example, if the hoped-for market return on a certain asset mix is 6% and the fee is 1.5%, then the fee is actually eating up 25% of the hoped for return, while the investor still bears 100% of the risk. Fees cannot be avoided completely because skilled people with expertise are needed to manage money and/or give advice, but they need to be watched carefully.
-As a general rule, most people choose not to invest money into stocks and shares that they think they might need within the short or medium term. Even though stocks have tended to go up in the long term, over a shorter period (anything less than 5-7 years in my view) the risk of losing capital value in the stock market is quite high. However, for the longer term, some people would argue that the risk of losing purchasing power to inflation by not owning stocks is an even higher risk, so some exposure to stocks is therefore needed to have a fair chance to protect the purchasing power against inflation. Also, the main way of making money through stocks is capital gains, which are taxed at a meaningfully lower rate than income, which helps for investments held in a general taxable account (ie not in a SIPP or pension)
-For UK residents who pay income tax in the UK and not anywhere else, saving into an ISA can be an attractive option. There is no tax deduction upon putting money into the ISA, but then within the ISA, the money can earn interest or gains tax free.
-Extra, voluntary pension contributions create restrictions on how and when the money can be accessed, but in exchange for that there are some important upfront tax advantages. It is, however, important to remember that at least 3/4 of the income and gains within a pension will ultimately get taxed as income As a general rule, pension contributions may be worthwhile for individuals who are higher-rate taxpayers or above, particularly if they expect to become basic rate taxpayers in retirement. Again, though, whether this is a good idea or not depends on your circumstances.
These may be less specific than what you wanted but I hope it helps somewhat.