Spare money - will need access in a few years, but not now. Where to put it?

[GiantFannyMuffin]

Me and DP will want to move house in the next decade. But not yet.

So we want to put money away so it'll work for us.
But we don't want to lock it away too tightly because we want to be able to access it for the house move when it comes.

We already max-out our ISAs (we have Vanguard retirement trackers).
And we have a couple of regular savings accounts but they have quite low limits on how much you can out into them.

Where's the best place to put the rest that's not going into ISA or regular savings, that'll be easy access in a few years?

We've already maxed-out premium bond allowance.

Huge thanks for any insights!

Have you paid your existing mortgage off? If not that would probably be best.

FML - sorry, I should've included that. Yes, we've paid it off. I'll amend the OP because that's quite important!

Bollocks, I can't amend the OP. But, yes, mortgage paid off and current house fully renovated so no costs coming up in that area barring disasters!

Have you checked the best rate tables on MSE? I'm with Nationwide so often tend to stick with them as it's easy - I open a new 1/2yr bond when my last one expires (if the rates are good).

Thanks, I'll do that

Given you’ve maxed out ISA’s and premium bonds and oats your mortgage surely the best thing is to stuff as much as possible into your pension funds? I know this means it’s locked away until you are 55+ but it sounds like you’ve got plenty other sources of easily accessible funds

Thank you, I had thought about pensions but I'd really like to keep quite a bit of cash accessible until we've moved house.

We don't know when we'll move house and we don't know how much cash we might need for that. So I'd prefer to keep as much of it easily accessible as possible just in case.

You can get 5% on an instant access and 6% if you fix for a couple of years. If you're maxed out on interest free savings and have no appetite for risk, then that's your best bet.

If you have maxed out ISA’s and Premium bonds you must have £140k easily accessible (2x £20k - and that’s just assuming one tax year worth of allowances- plus 2x £50k ). How much do you need to move given you will have the entire equity in your current un mortgaged house too?

Most people really underestimate the amount they need to live comfortably in later years - which if you are in good health could be 20-30 years or more after you reach pension age. That is what you could more usefully put any spare money towards.

Maxed out on PBs between 2 of you is £100k. And you are still earning, no mortgage…IASs can be accessed, wouldn’t you do best to put a good lot into pensions? For the tax advantage?

You can put it in good easy access or short fix savings but if either of you earn more than 1k in interest it will be taxed on it. I.e if you have more than about £20k of savings each at current rates.