Surrendering/trading an endowment half way through? Would this be stupid?

[GreenEggsAndSpam]

Or would it be a case of not throwing good money after bad? We have changed mortgages so we don't need it to pay out to cover us, so are just looking at it as a lump sum.

However, it is gong to pay out less than half we were originally advised it would pay, and in fact, a few grand less than we will have put in. However, if we pull out now, I realise we will not get our money back (although I don't know how much it will be).

Has anyone been in this situation and able to offer any words of experience?

Sorry for being so boring on a saturday night .

If you won't even get your money back at this stage you would probably be better not cashing it in - there's a thing you can do with endowments where they make them "paid up", you don't put any more money in but they carry on growing (a bit ) and you get more at the end and do get bonuses etc.

Prob worth speaking to an IFA

You might be able to sell the endowment which would probably pay more than the surrender value, but still less than you have put in.

It's probably worth getting serious with a calculator - you need to work out how much you will end up with if you keep paying into to and how much more you will have to put into it and compare it to how much you would end up with if you invested the sale/surrender value of the endowment for the time that it has left to run.

check my endowment website

It's really hard to find current inf about this kind of thing now...

we have just surrended ours as it is no longer attached to our mortgage.
we did very well out of it.

Thankyou! Hmm - I wanted a consensus! We do need to do our sums though...

Bit mistrustful of IFA's as it was a sh*te one that persuaded us to go for an endowment in the first place (against our intention). We did complain but he had covered his tracks on the paperwork and we couldn't prove he had misled us...

ANYWAY, deanychip, can I ask how you went about things?

Someone asked this question in the money pages of the Independent today. The view was don't cash it in since the 2nd hand market in them is strong meaning that they may do well.

Thanks Tinker - I found that online.
Opinion does seem very mixed

Best thing to do is speak to a financial adviser. it varies hugely from policy to policy depending on boring things like the financial strength of the issuing office, length of policy etc etc.

Failing thatm it maybe worth seeing how much you'd get for surrendering it, and making a guestimate of how much you may get if you hang onto it, and make a decision based on that.

try this to get a quote

There are many endowment trading people around at the moment so definately don't surrender without checking what someone would pay you.

How long have you had your endowmen? - if it's quite early one then you'll still be paying start up costs and that's why the surrender value is less than you've paid in.