Savings advice

[notacooldad]

A few years ago I paid off our mortgage. I have no loans and I live a relatively frugal but comfortable life.
I have a joint account with Dh and savings in my name which is ' our savings'
Over the past few years I've saved likee mad and have put away about £90, 000.
Our plan is to move house and use most of the savings so that we don't need to take a big mortgage or a mortgage at all as we will be using the sale of the house money as well.
What are the implications of having the money just sat in savings. It could be 6 months before we put our house up for sale it could be 12. It may even be sooner depending on circumstances.
My friend said something about £75,000 savings bring some sort of bench mark but I lost the point of what she was saying.

If it might be sooner than 6 or 9 months, find an Easy Access account that pays high interest. Money Saving Expert always has the latest best deals. Currently Sainsbury, or Shawcross if you need to make more than 3 withdrawals in the year.

Premium Bonds might be an option: winnings are tax free but you get no interest. Work out how much interest you would earn and decide if you want to gamble it on the chance of a big win!

Don’t know what your friend means.

Generally: you will pay tax on interest earnings of over £1k
Put your savings into a protected account, (they are protected to £85k per banking organisation including subsidiaries). MSE recommended accounts are protected.

Thank you for your advice.
I'm not sure what she meant either..
She has sold her place and is renting at the moment so has £200,000 of money at the moment and looked into investing, saving, buying a smaller property etc . However we were on a night out and had been drinking so I lost what she was trying to say!!! I'll ask her what she meant.

The £75k comment is about what funds are protected should your bank go bust. But it's 85,000. I've just c&p from FSCS for you.

The FSCS protects 100% of the first £85,000 you have saved, per UK-regulated financial institution (not per account). So in simple terms, if your bank were to fail, the FSCS aims to get any savings up to this amount back to you within seven working days.

Yes, @LizzieMacQueen is correct.
Your friend was most likely talking about the FSCS protection

There are three things to consider on your savings.

First - Savings protection. You would need to limit your savings to £85K per institution to ensure this under the FSCS protection.

Second - tax efficiencies. If your savings are not held within an ISA the interest earned could be liable for tax (depending on your personal allowance and income).

Third - maximising interest on the capital sum. Interest rates have been rising, and the best rates on easy access accounts are constantly shifting. A relatively small amount of time investigating the best available rates each month and switching your savings to them could make a difference to your final pot, of hundreds of pounds (or more) in interest added each year.

If you find that you don't need access to the savings for a year, you could utilise higher fixed rate savings products, or filter into a mix of regular savings accounts which offer very attractive rates.

Anything over £85k is not protected so I'd be putting that in DH name.