If you had 30k would you spend it, save it or pay a chunk off your mortgage?

[MrsTumbletap]

Hi all, my husband has just inherited 30k from sadly losing his dad. We weren't expecting it and we now have this chunk of money we are not sure what to do with.

We still have a massive mortgage that we will be paying for another 25 years at least.

Even if we take the 30k off the mortgage it will still be nearly 180k to pay off.

We both work so go on a holiday every year, and have cars that work fine so we don't really need it for a purchase of anything.

What would you do with it? Put it in an ISA? take it off the mortgage? Take some off the mortgage but not all? Put it in a high interest current account?

I currently overpay my mortgage each month and I'm always given the option to either reduce term length or monthly payments. If you are affording payments, go for reducing term length. I can only overpay by 10% a year otherwise l incurr penalty charges

I would split it
10k on the mortgage
10k in a savings account
10k to spend on a holiday and or home improvements

We can only pay 10% of the mortgage a year without incurring a fee, so we would do that, keep some to do the same the following year, re-do our bathroom and put the rest in savings.

Do you have kids? It might be worth splitting the money evenly amongst them and putting into some sort of high interest accounts for them to have when they turn 18. DH’s mum did that with inheritance from her parents and that was the deposit on our first home. We’d never have gotten our foot on the property ladder otherwise.

However, if you already have savings for the kids and if you already have an emergency fund of 3-6 months’ expenses saved up, I’d skim off a bit for a holiday and then put the rest on mortgage. The interest you’ll save is astronomical.