# What to do with savings



## bagpuss (18 Mar 2013)

Age: 45
Spouse’s/Partner's age: 49

Annual gross income from employment or profession: unemployed
Annual gross income of spouse: 29683

Monthly take-home pay Spouse wage: 1600
                                 Mine: 240 - unemployment benefit
                                 C.A.; 260

Type of employment: e.g. Civil Servant, self-employed : Spouse public servant

In general are you:
(a) spending more than you earn, or
(b) saving?

Rough estimate of value of home: 250K
Amount outstanding on your mortgage: 53,200K. 

3 mortgage accounts details below:
38K due to finish in Oct 2019 variable rate. Payments 650 pm
7,200 due to finish in Oct 2015 - fixed rate to this Sept. Payments 473 pm
8,000 due to finish in May 2020. fixed rate to May. Payments 120 pm


What interest rate are you paying? various

Other borrowings – car loans/personal loans etc: none

Do you pay off your full credit card balance each month? Yes
If not, what is the balance on your credit card? 

Savings and investments: Savings of 48K

Do you have a pension scheme? no

Do you own any investment or other property? no

Ages of children: 8 and 4

Life insurance: 82 pm


What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?
We have savings of approx 48K.  Most is from a redundancy payment I got last year.  I am looking for work at the moment. 
We hope when the middle mortgage comes off fixed rate to clear it fully in Sept.
We had also planned to clear the smaller mortgage in May when it comes off fixed rate.  However, my car is starting to give us problems.  I don't use it a lot at the moment.  However,  should I be lucky to get work I will need use of a car as not a lot of job opportunities where we are living.

As I don't have a pension and will have to put kids through education, I want to hold onto at least 30K in savings. 
 If we clear both the mortgages and then the car needs to be replaced, we don't have a lot of rainy day money left.  We have already used some of our savings to pay our VHI bill this year.  We won't be buying a new car but would still need a decent amount to get a good car that we can keep for a long time.

Should we just clear the middle mortgage when it comes off fixed rate and then increase the repayments on the others to get them cleared quicker? We will then have some money available should the car need to be replaced.

I am also a little nervous with the current situation in Cyprus. I know some have said it will not happen here but I cannot help thinking that it is something that will happen in Ireland  - despite what those in power say.


----------

