So I managed to sell my house but have no intention of buying a new one for some time yet. Question is what to do with the equity. Spending it is unfortunately out of the question. So savings account? Not worth it currently. Invest it? Tempted to throw a load into HSBC shares as they dropped due to issuing more but by all accounts are well placed to ride the storm and hopefully return to the £10/share days, albeit in a few years but thats fine.

Any other ideas?

yeah wrong forum.

Hookers and crack.

MM there isn’t much you can do to get much return at the moment. ISA’s/savings accounts have poor rates of interest. So not much advice to be honest! I’d buy another house and pay off chunk of mortgage with it, but for some reason you said you don’t want to do that.

Yeah, the best bet would be to invest in another house and pay off as much mortgage as possible.

There was a regular saver a couple of weeks ago at 6% but you’re capped at £1000/month I believe.

The stockmarket is surely a minefield at the minute, if you can find a stable investment of a stock that you know is unlikely to go bust then it is an option, or consult a financial advisor.

Or you could buy a bike!

Yeah, the best bet would be to invest in another house and pay off as much mortgage as possible

really? invest in a depreciating illiquid asset?

Don’t invest all your money in one stock – very risky! You need a balanced portfolio to reduce the risk to a level you are happy with. Obviously less risk means smaller returns. See a financial advisor.

Point taken, but wouldn’t purchasing a house be better than renting?

Savings then. All savings accounts under £50k are guaranteed. Just use multiple accounts in different places. http://www.moneysavingexpert.com shows a savings account at just below 4%, which may be a good place to start?

Depends on how house prices are likely to go in the medium term, I suspect they are going to continue falling for the next 12 -18 months. Effectively, buying a house is investing in a single asset – this will increase your risk in terms of probability of getting a certain return. However, this must be weighed against the low cost of borrowing at the moment and the fact it is a buyers market. If you could get credit at a good rate, fixed for x amount of time, and offer a silly low price to someone desperate to sell it might be worth it.

Personally I’d keep the money in a savings account and watch the way the market moves in the next 12 months before committing to another mortgage.

Here in the States, Stocks are at a 40 yr low…trick is figuring out who is gonna survive the economic downturn we are going thru..but some are so under valued right now that you can get them for pennies on the dollar.
Normally Realestate is a safe bet…but even that is a depreciating market right now…Hookers and Crack may be the safest bet.

I was toying with the idea of buying shares in some high risk companies – mainly construction / housebuilders. Barratt shares, for example, were trading at £12 a couple of years ago and are now fluctuating around 80p. provided they don’t go bust, I suspect they’ll stay fairly level whilst house prices are low (maybe drop a little further) then pick up in 2011. This is HIGH RISK! Don’t do it and blame me when they go bust in a couple of weeks!

Fixed Income Bonds?

What MrSmith said about houses. I think the worst is yet to come on that front so glad to have the equity out.

What ChunkyMTB said and then waste the rest…

Buy a new shock pump?

If only someone would recommend one 🙂

OR

Crackers and hooks.

Now is the time to buy any long term buys if you get me. If you need a new car, buy now and get one thats gonna last several years for a bloody cheap price.

It may well seem like a pain in the arse not knowing what to do with a few grand right now, as almost anything you do with it is very risky, or returns next to nothing on your investment. But I’ve got the opposite problem, whereby cos of being unemployed for almost 4 months, I am more skint than I’ve been in years!

mattress

MrSmiths graph suggests that waiting a while longer, or even now to buy a house would give a massive ROI in about 10 years time

Premium bonds. You won’t lose money and you might win a lot.

Hookers,Drugs & a Lapierre or Ibis 😉

orange alpine?

“you won’t lose money”
but inflation is higher than savings rates. NS&I have cut the amount of prizes, i cashed most of mine in and brought fixed rate bonds at the end of last year. they are still better than the lottery though.

(it’s not my graph. it’s freely available data.)