Moving to states

A house of only 35k!!??

I think endowments are best left to run to term, else you loose if you cash them early.

Thanks for the advice.

I was looking for more help with regards to the house sale and settling of the mortgage.

With regards to the value, I dont think they have appreciated that much in my area, but I could be wrong.

Thanks

Neil

You would be surprised in how much values have gone up, just make sure you get at least 3 agents to value it.

The funds normally go straight from your selling solicitor to the lending bank, and he gives you what's left which could be quite a bit if the price has gone up ;-)

And if the endowment was charged as security to the lender, it should be re-assigned to you.

I would be inclined to surrender (or sell it, if it's With Profits), depending on the figures involved.

Hello again,

Thanks for the comments.

It could well me so that I have more equity in my house than I thought - this will be a welcome plus.

With regards to the endownment, it is a with profits policy and I have just successfully won a settlement which also came in nicely. Therefore a sale is most certainly on the cards.

One thing i've just looked into is how much can I make my money work over there.

After making a few calls the typical rates for savings with $30-50k is less than 1%. How on earth do they make their hard earned money work?

Seems like i'd be best leaving my pot over here?

Thanks

Neil

You can't just consider interest rates in isolation. You also have to consider inflation, the cost of goods in the two countries, and varying exchange rates. For example, at the moment the is strong against the $. If it went the other way over the next few years you might be better off if you xferred your money to dollars now. Or if you bought a car in the US, since it would probably be 1/2 the price of the same car in the UK, your money might be better of in the US where you can get more for it. Or if inflation in the UK is 3% and interest rates 4%, whereas in the US it was -2% and 1%, money in the US would be growing at a greater real rate.

Are you going to use the money to buy property in the US?

Have a look at the interest rates on longer-dated Treasury Bonds. My recollection from looking at Bloomberg is that they are in the 4-5% range. Don't forget that you can still find accounts here paying 0.1%.

In message , Adrian Boliston writes

Depends on the endowment provider and the funds in which it invests.. In the current dire climate for endowments it may be best to cut losses now.

Check the following websites house price calculators for an idea and look in the newspapers -

- Land Registry

Re currency transfer - negotiate on rate & commission and talk to some companies that specialise in currency transfers. It's a FAQ; search the uk.finance archive

Daytona

The base rate there is 1%. I guess you will just have to live with it. Find a us.finance type group and see what they say there.

But possibly not if it's Standard Life ...

Agreed, but I have been saying that anyway about SL despite very recent developments.

Even in general it may be worth waiting for a few months, if markets recover a bit more then MVAs may be reduced.

It seems odd to me that the FTSE is still so low when other indices have bounced a long way back - I see the mid-250 went back over 6000 yesterday, which is about where it was in 1999 when the FTSE was nearly 7000. I guess one thing is that for dollar-based investors the FTSE has in fact risen quite a lot.

The technical analyst for Citywire has been saying since September that the FTSE was about to break out of its trading range and would make a big move when it did. He kept on saying that even when it briefly went down at the end of September and came back up again, and since it went above 4400 or so before xmas he keeps saying that it should now be about to move up sharply. I guess if you keep predicting something long enough it may happen eventually ...

You should look at the FT30 index. 4156.8 on 31 Dec 1999, and 1870.9 last night.

That's the effect of Marconi for you.

Probably more the effect of using a geometric mean (if I'm remembering right that that's what the FT 30 uses).

The essential difference is that companies only drop out of the FT30 when they vanish by sale or merger, or become defunct. The replacement has to come in at the value of the departing share to avoid a step change. But yes, the maths are different.