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markmurphy
25th April 2007, 10:36 PM
Hi all,

My wife and I are arriving in August this year from the UK. We are just completing on the sale of our two flats (converted our house into them for the extra £££'s it gave us).
Luckily this money will pay off our mortgage here and leave us with a nice profit.

My question is, what to do with the cash? I want to be as safe as possible with it and also to try to have the investment grow as much as possible too.
I also want to be able to get to it if I need to in case we decide that we miss our family / friends too much and end up coming back to the UK :-(

I see it as having a number of options:
a) stick it in an instant access high interest savings account in the UK. Not necessarily great as inflation is high and unless we can find >6% rate we will loose money (in real terms) according to Radio 4!
b) stick it in a locked in savings account in UK. Better rate but might have to leave it there for 3/5 years.
c) a or b in NZ. Obviously will have to move the money at the right exchange rate time and hope that if we do go back the exchange rate is still favourable.
d) buy a house in NZ and hope it's value increases more than we would make in a savings account (again I am planning worst case scenario of having to move back to UK). We can possibly be mortgage free or have a small one and so we'd be more insulated from interest rate rises.
e) blow it all at bar / casino.

I know I'll need to talk to an IFA (if I can find one that will look into NZ investments) but I thought that many of you would have had similar problems and might have some suggestions. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Mark

veronica
26th April 2007, 09:05 AM
you can move the money to a sterling account here and let it just earn interest until the exchange rate gets better. thats what we have done. its accessable if you need to switch it over in small amounts too

anna_c
26th April 2007, 09:25 AM
It's probably not the most important factor to consider, but it's worth noting that having a few grand in savings in NZ usually means you can get your bank fees waived.

roddixon
26th April 2007, 09:40 AM
you can move the money to a sterling account here and let it just earn interest until the exchange rate gets better. thats what we have done. its accessable if you need to switch it over in small amounts too

This sounds interesting-could you please provide more details such as which bank; interest rate earned etc etc.

Many thanks.

Steve

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