£90k inheritance

[Grownin]

What am I best doing with it? Mortgage is paid off, pension may be worth £180k at retirement. I’ll want to help my son out with some professional training costs. But how could I maximise an investment of £90k?

You need professional advice ie a financial adviser

You could put £20k in your pension if it’s allowed or open a Sipp, that’s an immediate £5k gain with the tax relief. Depending on your age you could play it safe and put it in a short term money market fund that tracks the inter-bank rate or you could put it in a cheap global equities fund if you have at least 8 years.
Then £20k in an ISA now + £20k next April.
The rest split between a 12 month savings bond and an easy access account.

Definitely some in your pension, then 20k in stocks and shares ISA. Have a look high interest accounts for the rest for now.

Depends on your age/risk appetite/other factors.

I inherited the same amount last year and paid off DH's student loan and a 0% credit card early, maxed both our S&S ISAs, topped up premium bonds, paid a chunk off the mortgage, started SIPPs for the kids, treated our niblings to birthday dinners and bought a(nother) pony I didn't need to top up our pensions as mine is well-funded and DH's is defined benefit but YMMV

We have everything self managed (S&S ISAs and kids' SIPPs) in vanguard index trackers

that is not enough money to get a financial advisor.

Definitely stocks & shares ISA - Nutmeg or Hargreaves Landsdown or similar. Put in as much as you can each year until it is all in.

I‘m 52 and probably quite risk averse. Earning £70k pa right now

Great range of advice, thanks all!

Buy buy to let flat and rent it out. You can sell it or giving it to your children later on

Sorry just hijacking thread as I got a similar amount in a recent settlement. I will need to dip into some of it (for big house repairs etc).
currently I’ve gone for cash isa (5.2%), savings account (5%) and premium bonds.
i was toying with the idea of a stocks and shares ISA via Vanguard but haven’t gone ahead with it.

are stocks and shares ones generally considered better than cash ISA?
I am early 40s and not a very high earner, am not really going to be able to add to savings in the next few years

over the long term (10-20 years), stocks & shares ISAs have always done better than cash ISAs. inflation eats away at the value of your cash ISA, but an S&S ISA can keep growing faster than inflation (assuming the economy doesn't go crazy).

you do have to tolerate risk and be in it for the long term because the S&S ISA can go down some years. but if you hold tight, it will go back up too.

Thank you that’s really useful, I think I’m going to take the plunge with vanguard. Perhaps £15K as I’m confident I could leave that there for a long while.

pension may be worth £180k at retirement.

Presumeably, this is your estimate when you reach 67.

I'm the same age as you - 52 and without a doubt, I would be maximising my pension contributions using the carry forward rules to benefit from unused annual allowances from the previous 3 tax years. This is a no brainer and would help you to have more options for an earlier retirement.

Any surplus, I would utilise in a S&S Isa.

Back date maxing out your pension for the last three years. Max out your ISA allowance. Moving forward, shift some or all of the ISA money into pension over time as you can if you have spare allowance.