After a drop in my savings rate (thanks govt/BoE for giving the banks cheap money to make banks not need to attract savers... that'll help the country's solvency) to under 2% for a cash ISA, I took a chunk out yesterday and offset it against the part of my mortgage that's currently at SVR.
Most of the mortgage is Base rate +0.39%, but as some may remember (or not) I was thinking about getting a country cottage for weekends/days off - and possibly to (semi) retire to in due course.
I bought said cottage last November with savings and an extension to the mortgage on my main residence (thus the cottage is owned outright and I can do with it as I please if I did decide to let it out in the future).
Anyhoos, still got a little in cash ISA which I'll probably shift to the mortgage soon enough but the bulk of my cash is in Inflation-linked National Savings bonds, and offsetting my mortgage (which has the same effect as paying it off but leaves the option of drawing it back out if needed).
I don't see interest rates rising for at least a couple of years, and expect inflation to jump up a bit more over the next couple of years as sterling weakens further.
If someone had offered me RPI + 0.5/1.0% as a good return 10 years ago I'd have laughed at them....
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