lump sum - pay mortgage or invest

dervalh

Registered User
Messages
19
I have lump sum of e7000. I have two options - either to put it into reducing down mortgage or investing it into somelike like unit linked fund iwht Quinn direct. Which is the better option financially - should one try to increase repayments into one's mortgage or put regular savings into quinn direct or the like. My interest rate on mortgage is 2.79% and yield for unit linked fund is likely to be around 6% mark.
Thanks in advance
 
How much was the original mortgage, how much is outstanding, what is the value of your home and what are your annual earnings? What are your plans for the savings if you decide to invest them?
 
150,000 is outstanding on 20 year mortgage. Value of house is 400,000. After all expenses, I have around 1,000 monthly to put away as savings. I was just wondering should one pay off mortgage as soon as possible or invest savings.
 
There is no easy catch all answer as a lot depends on your plans etc. Reducing the mortgage is a good way to get an immediate "return" on your money in terms of the mortgage interest costs that you will avoid especially if you keep your repayments at the pre capital repayment level and thereby also reduce the effective term of the mortgage. Karl Jeacle's mortgage calculator is useful for gauging the savings involved in an accelerated mortgage repayment strategy. On the other hand if you have specific short, medium or long term plans that would benefit from you saving/investing the money rather than paying it off the mortgage then perhaps these should take priority. Of course you could always do both (e.g. split the spare cash 50:50 or in some other ratio between accelerated mortgage repayments and short, medium or long term savings/investments.).
 
Thanks for advise - think I'll put sum towards mortage repayments thereby reducing mortgage term somewhat and put monthly savings into unit linked fund which has no fixed duration.
 
Have same dilemna. Have lump sum of €10,000 and SSIA(Pip) of €15,000. Have mortgage of €60,000 on house over 20 years - market value €250,000. Will also have €254/mth freed up when SSIA comes to fruition. What to do with the cash flowing in??
 
Again there are no one size fits all answers and much depends on the individual's overall financial and personal circumstances, plans, attitude to risk/volatility, savings/investment timeframe(s) etc. For those who have the mortgage down to a mangageable level the next priority might be to make sure that their pension is adequately funded. After that whether it makes sense to further reduce the mortgage or save/invest the money elsewhere really depends on the individual's needs and plans etc. If in doubt get independent, professional advice from a good authorised advisor or multi agency intermediary but avoid tied agents unless you know what you already want from them.
 
It's a personal choice. For me, the peace of mind of paying down or paying off the mortgage was worth it. Perhaps we could have made more by investing the money, but there's no feeling like owing less (for us at least!)
 
Me too as it happens but as you say a lot depends on personal circumstances. I would consider myself fairly (probably unnecessarily!) conservative when it comes to savings/investments. It took me a few years to realise that sticking my pension into 100% equity funds was the right thing to so and not to worry about any volatility along the way! :eek:
 
Back
Top