Endowments? Did anyone have one? And what did they do with it?

[nkf]

And why is it so difficult to get any decent advice about them? I've asked various advisors what I should do with mine and they all shake their heads and say "they weren't a good buy?" but when it come to advice, nada.

The choices are:

i) cash in and pay into pension
ii) cash in and pay into some other kind of saving vehicle.
iii) put head in sand for another five years until it matures. But then what?

Pension I guess.

Too dull eh?

I cashed mine in halfway through and stuck it in the mortgage

it was tiny, mind

We have just cashed ours in and used £10,000 to reduce mortgage. it was an endowment mortgage we ahd, we've ahd huge problems getting any sort of "forecast" about how much the shortfall is/was going to be.

oh blimey we have one i don't understand it at all. we can't change to a repayment as it would be nearly double.

we got compenstation for mis-selling at it was a crappy £500 odd.

so i suppose i am sticking my head in the sand and trying to ignore it

We're lucky, our payments for switching to a repayment didn't go up that much, from £186 to £224. We have beent trying to get compensation but it's a struggle, not helped any by the company Prudential having their call centre and custmoer service staff based in india. They struggle to understand me and I struggle to understand them, calls to ask 1 simple question can take up to 45 mintues!

My mortgage is a repayment. It's just I never cashed in the endowment because I didn't know what to do with it. But I know it's a bad deal.

We haven't done anything. Will wait till the end of the term and then pay off the shortfall. Is that the wrong thing to do then?

Ours are still running, 7 years to go .... Mortgage no longer fully dependent on their maturity value as part repayment.

will the credit crunch make them even worse?

you can sell them you know, will get more for it than cashing it in with the provider.

Malory. I have looked into cashing mine in. What I can never find out is what to reinvest it in.

It costs about £60 a month. And the last time I checked the surrender value was around £25k. It will deliver just over £40k in five years time (perhaps). It has a life assurance element but I could probably get that cheaper.

Basically, I'm about to start a job with a decent pension scheme and I wondered if I should cash in the endowment and buy as many extra years as possible.

We were going to sell ours, until we discovered that it wasn't, as we thought as "with profits" endowment, it was a "with profits unit linked" endowment

Is "with profits" better?

But as an investment it's poor isn't it?
A poor rate of interest for such a long term saving? That's what's always bothered me.

Apparently a unit linked endowment has no resale value at all. The lovely man from the FSA did explain it too me. So not only were we facing a £10,000 shortfall, we couldn't get rid of the bloody thing

Our mortgage was part endownment part interest only. There was going to be a shortfall, so we cashed it in and changed the mortgage. My friend changed her mortgage but has kept her endownment as a savings.

That's pretty much what i did. But every so often I keep thinking what a rubbish savings vehicle it is.

We've still got ours, but have changed to repayment mortgage. I asked an IFA what to do, and he suggested making them "paid up", which means that you don't pay any more into them, but you don't cash it in until the original date.

However, I didn't get round to doing this, so I'm still paying in, hoping that in 8 years I'll at least get back enough to cover my payments. I'll then pay off a chunk of mortgage.

It's rubbish - I'd have been better sticking the money in a box under the bed.

I know Mrs Muddle.
That was the IFA's advice was it? Or just a possibility?