How much money do you consider 'sufficient' in Savings.

My Mum has just had a letter from her Building Society telling her they are reducing their interest rate to...
... wait for it...
0.01 per cent.

That's a penny per year for every £100 you have saved.

So she won't be living off that interest!

I won't leave it directectly to the grandchildren for several reasons. There is a huge age gap between them some just babies others already working. Very different financial circumstances with regards to their other GParents. 2 of them have a trust fund set up from birth from GP. I am sure that my children will help them should anything be left when I go.

I expect that like most of us, care home fees or paying carers or adapting our home will probably eat into any nheritance.

Sorry to disappoint you but if it is 0.01% that is a penny for Every £1000.

The danger of leaving the money to DGC is that more may come along after we have crossed the bar.
At least the DC can use it for their own and their children's benefit.

If you feel you have suffient savings already then disperse your money between your children (though I'd advise you stipulate it must go towards paying the mortgage off, not splurging as you could do that more enjoyably yourself). Since income is taken into account should you need /residential nursing care it is better to shelter and give it as an early bequest to your own.

I agree with mumofmadboys it is not fair to give money away and then let others subsidise you. In any case if you do give cashould away just before you go into a home that gift is still counted as yours.
My mother paid her own care fees from the sale of her house her fees were far higher than those of the council funded residents. In other words she was subsidising them.

Of course it's not fair to give your money away so you can get state care! Imagine if everyone did that.

We are living longer, a fact, someone has to pay for our care should we need it, another fact. We can't expect to pass our money to our children while the younger generation pay out for our care thinking that as long as our offspring are doing ok, that's fine.

Some time back, they were talking about putting a ceiling, e.g. £72k that you could reasonably be expected to either keep or pay towards your care, I can't remember which way round it was. I think that sounds fair.

Meanwhile, we live in a house that is too big for us (not huge but definitely could make do with something smaller)and see how the younger generation have all but given up on ever having a home to call their own.

We are having our time, have had a lot of it, we had expectations that were usually more than met. We managed to save a bit, which is fine, but we really can't justify our goal being to hand on all our property/savings. I don't know about others on here but I know that my own two have made their way in life, own homes, children etc. If anything, I would consider leaving a bit to my grandchildren whose parents may well live even longer than us older people, with good healthcare etc. But I fully expect to have to pay towards my care costs/living expenses in my old age, if I am lucky to get there.

Re savings, there will always be upkeep on one's own home, even if we downsize. I think that a reasonable amount to have in savings would be approximately twice your annual pension income which, in our case, would be around £60-70k. We don't have anything near that but I think that would be comforting until we have to downsize.

But I would expect that to dwindle over the years as things need replacing.

garnet25 my mother also paid for her care and in doing so subsidised others. This is the same situation with my brother who is paying higher fees in his care home than those paid for some of the other residents who are paid for by the council. I have no objection to paying care home fees if it was a set amount.

I don't think it is wrong to give our money to our children if we want to. We earned it by working hard, some (lucky enough to be able have some spare) spend their money others save.

My very organised and efficient DD1 was cooking up a cunning plan whereby she was going to look for a suitable big house to accommodate DH and me, her inlaws, and various odds and sods of elderly relatives with no children, in our respective dotages. Cost effective and much easier than having to visit us all in different homes, she said. It involved hiring a couple of nurses and getting a minibus to ferry us about in. It started off as a joke, but actually the more we discussed her dafter ideas for us the more sensible it seemed. I must ask her how plans are progressing

If we are not to spend our spare money on things like holidays, why did we bother to invest into our pensions for exactly that reason, I might as well had an extra 10% in my pay packet for the last 30 years of my working life.

Maggie run with that idea. It has the makings of a wonderful film! A sort of UK version of the Marigold Hotel but set in a seaside town such as Southport or Bognor Regis.

Add in the vagaries of our NHS, the fact that they could still be driving in their dotage, overseas nurses (preferably wearing the niqab) and throw in a couple of neighbours of the type you see on Chanel 5 Neighbours From Hell and you have a potential winner

DIL said that we can all bunk up in their spare room

WOBBLY. New car or hip?

i know where i would spend the pennies.

Yes it's under £23K but as many people own their own homes and homes cost far more than that anyone who owns their own home will not get free care. You are expected to sell yr home to pay for your fees.

Mumofmadboys - I think you've raised a very interesting question. Someone said to me recently that the financial laws are made BY rich people and FOR rich people. They take care of their own. Therefore ordinary people are quite entitled to use those laws in the same way, as best they can, to safeguard their finances.

The Duke of Westminster died recently. He was worth about £9bn. Yes really. £9 billion, not million. And how much inheritance tax do they expect to pay on his estate?

None.

Not a penny.

www.telegraph.co.uk/tax/inheritance/inheritance-tax-and-how-the-dukes-of-westminster-avoid-it-on-the/

Of course, to add insult to injury, he would have inherited much of his wealth. I doubt he went to an office job 5 days a week to earn his £9bn... And he would have had an army of accountants to advise him and set up trusts for him and generally squirrel the money away to protect it. And (this is speculation admittedly) the money he paid those accountants and specialist advisors would probably amount to more than most of us earn in a year and have to actually live on.

So one argument is that we should do whatever we can to ensure that our children inherit as much of our wealth as possible, rather than the government taking it for care costs.

Perhaps the answer is that we pay a contribution towards our care costs, and then the rest if covered by the government. That could be done throughout our working life - a bit like the way we pay towards the state pensions. Alternatively we could take out insurance, as we do with life assurance or critical illness cover. Either way we spread the cost over time and the cost is limited to something affordable. Also, crucially, we need to pay up to a limited amount for the care.

I think most people would feel happy making a fair contribution to their costs, it's the thought of our whole life savings being taken away that scares me. It took us a lifetime to build that nest egg up, but it could be gone in a few years.

It makes me think I should have followed the example of friends who decided to just spend it all, and enjoy life, and let the council take care of them if they need it later. That goes against everything I believe in about self-sufficiency, but it would surely be better than having scrimped and saved, and denied ourselves holidays and treats for decade after decade, only to have it spent on someone wiping the dribble off my chin in years to come!

If only !!!!! Waiting for my meagre pension to arrive hopefully on Monday (for what it's worth now the exchange rate has dropped !) ....any small saving s we did have have now gone on replacing the heating, replacing the boiler, replacing the kitchen ....paying the astronimical French taxes ...all necessary, and saved up for at the time ....now keeping fingers crossed nothing else happens until I have managed to save up just a little more for the huge leccy bill in December ......oh, I did buy a Euro lottery ticket and treated myself to a coffee out this morning ...extravagant, I know ! c'est la vie !

How much does a funeral cost when you already have a plot ready for you with your late husband?

This would affect the money I need to put aside - provided I don't end up in a nursing home.

It is not true to say the Duke of Westminter was 'worth 9 billion' when he died, any more than it is correct to say that, say, that if the chairman of M&S dies suddenly, he is worth, the value of M&S.

Most large estates are little different from large private companies and the title holder has no more control over their assets than the chairman of any other company. yes, he was wealthy, but not as wealthy as lazy newspapers reported.

If Mrskipling had read any of the many obituaries of the Duke shw would have found that indeed he didn't work a five day week, he often worked a six and seven day week. He had a very strong social conscience and gave away large sums of money to causes he took an active and personal interest in. He felt very uncomfortable with his wealth and hated his traditional upbringing. His children were educated in the state sector and private day schools near their home in the north of England. His death was attributed partly to his tendency to overwork and he had worked himself into serious illness several times.

He was in fact the exact opposite of what Mrskipling suggested.
I never knew the Duke of Westminster or any body associated him and I know that there are many families,aristocratic and otherwise who think the world owes them a living and live a sybaritic lifestyle on others hard work, but the late Duke of Westminster was not one of them.

Jollyg, I accept why you make the comment "new car or hip", but you do not know the full circumstances.

Firstly without a newer car we would not see my GC very often as they all live 100's of miles away and our old car has broken down 4 times on the road this year. So for us, a reliable car is an essential if we wish to see our family. Neither would we be able to help them with child care, as we are doing at this very moment.

Secondly, my hip was perfect when we bought the car, but I would still buy it now. Driving is one of the few things I can do that enable my wife and I to enjoy life atm. Without a reliable car we would be stuck indoors. With a car we can (as we did the other week) drive to Dunwich and enjoy fish and chips looking across Minsmere.

Thirdly, we can still afford to have my hip replaced privately if we choose.

Fourthly, many people, who know better than I, have recommended I go the NHS route, and any ethical surgeon would not replace the hip unless it met the NHS criteria.

How we choose to spend our savings is our business and only we know the circumstances.

Wobblybits, for what it's worth, my DBIL has had three hip replacements (no, he's not a freak, he had one done twice!). He had the first two done privately, and wasn't particularly happy when he was told he would have to have the third one (the second on one side) done under the NHS, as it was designated high risk. He'd kept on paying for his very expensive private insurance when he retired just because he knew this would be coming up.

He said that the NHS care was better by far, and he had a course of physiotherapy, delivered at his home, that just wasn't offered when he had his second one done a year earlier. He even had a better single room than he'd had at the private hospital!

MrsK You said Therefore ordinary people are quite entitled to use those laws in the same way, as best they can, to safeguard their finances.

It's one thing to safeguard your family finances by investing in ISAs, taking advantage of any legitimate tax relief going, putting money into trusts for DGC etc, and quite another to deliberately deprive yourself of assets in order to come below a threshold at which you will receive state benefits that you wouldn't be otherwise entitled to. I think that's what Mumofmadboys was referring to.

he he he I too think I'm lucky if I have 23.00 in my savings account. lol and if I were lucky enough to get an inheritance I would soon go through it as there are so many things other people take for granted that I have never had. I still see others worse than me so I'm lucky

Remember many of us will need some care in our own homes before we ever need full time care in a care home.

You will be financially assessed and most people have to pay a contribution for home care. Those with £23k+ get no help at all but there is a sliding scale under that. Care in your home can cost £16 per hour +

Most areas now have extra care housing replacing care homes. This is where you either buy or rent a flat with support available on site. If you need this, or need a care home you would need to sell your house, unless you have enough savings set aside to pay for it.

I know a gentleman who was in his seventies and very fit and well. He paid for his grandsons university tuition fees from his savings. A couple of years later he had a severe stroke and needed nursing care. The Local Authority tried to reclaim the university fees from the grandson who had a job by this time. They said grandad had deliberately deprived himself of assets. This was not the case, he could not reasonably have known that he would later have a stroke and need care. However, this took quite a lot to prove. I suggest getting financial advice if you want to give away money to your family. You never know what is round the corner.

At our U3A we had a talk from a solicitor about avoiding care home fees (among other things) The common belief that there is a time limit on gifts is not true, If a council can prove that money was given away to avoid care homes fees, they can recover them regardless of how long ago they were gifted, your children or GC could get an unpleasant shock.