Moneymakeover Deposit or investment funds for children

[Mrs Eaux]

Personal details
Your age:45
Your spouse's age: 46
Number and age of children: 2, 11yrs and 14yrs old

Income and expenditure
Annual gross income from employment or profession:
Me: €115,000
Spouse: €99,000
Monthly net salary: €9,400

Type of employment: both public sector

Summary of Assets and Liabilities
Family home value: €650K
Mortgage on family home: €390k, fixed at 2.25% for a further 3 years. 17 years remaining on mortgage

Cash: €20k
Defined Contribution pension fund: Both public sector pensions

Buy to Let Property value: €380k
Buy to let Mortgage: €18k
Rent: €1,600 p/m

Other borrowings – car loans/personal loans etc
car loan: €13k , 3 years remaining

Do you pay off your full credit card balance each month?
Yes

Life insurance:
No, both have income protection through work

What specific question do you have or what issues are of concern to you?
Want to put meagre savings to work and to start regularly saving €1,000 per month but don't know where to put it. Presuming that we will finance children in college through our own monthly cashflow but would be nice to have a small nest egg for them. We are likely to inherit property and cash worth about €800k between us over the next 10 years and as we have public sector pensions we are not overly concerned about financing for retirement. Considering an investment fund from likes of Zurich and presume that we would need to put away for 7 or 8 years, but concerned that market is at or very near the tipping point. Is this a silly time to decide to invest?

 

[ClubMan]

Have you checked the many existing threads on the issue of "savings for children" in case they answer your questions or otherwise give you food for thought?

 

[publicservice1]

If it helps,
My kids are 10 years ahead of yours, salaries in this household not dissimilar. College expenses could well be covered by current income, especially if the kids are willing to work part time while in college. I provided for college costs through the best Deposit rates I could find at the time, but now, although we are well into our college journey, its still untouched. I hadn't accounted for the kids wanting to work and earn for themselves at this stage... If I had my time back I'd have invested rather than using the Deposit route.