What to do with UK-based cash?

Investing / Others
1

Hello all,

Last year we sold our UK house due to various issues with the management and costs and ongoing hassle. We didn’t bring the money over as the exchange rate collapsed around the same time and for now we have left this amount in a standard account in the UK.

We’d like to do something more useful with this of course, and had thought to bring the cash over to Switzerland to help fund a property purchase here…but the exchange rate is still putting us off and we’re not 100% convinced on buying here anyway.

The amount is around 200k GBP and we don’t have urgent needs for it to be here, so if it is tied up for the short/medium term it’s not a problem for us. What suggestions do people have to better put this money to work…especially given the current situation regarding Brexit etc?

Many thanks!!

2

What’s wrong with exchange rate? it’s what it is and what other people are willing to pay you for it right now. if you’re waiting for it to improve, you’re speculating not investing. Historically cash has been a rather poor investment

1 Like
3

Transfer the GBP to CHF and invest it in equity index funds and bonds.

4

Second that. and waiting for a ‘good exchange rate’ will never happen.

5

I’d transfer the money to my IB account and either convert it to USD and invest in VT ETF (just like I do with my CHFs), or I’d invest it in some low-cost, broadly diversified GBP-denominated index fund (if I’d prefer to keep GBPs).

6

That doesn’t keep your money in GBP. Currency risk will be determined by individual companies you’re ultimately invested in

7

Yes, I should have written that it doesn’t make any difference - the currency risk is still there, it’s just denominated in GBP. The only solution to keep it really in GBP is to buy currency hedged fund but this, on the other hand, is costly (or invest only in UK companies, but this doesn’t make sense from diversification point of view). So, yeah I’d just convert it into USD and invest into VT ETF.

8

Thanks for all the replies…sorry for the stupidly late reply, life got in the way just after I posted and I only just remembered about it.

I agree that market timing is a fools game, but as we have no need to bring the money over right now, one option was to look at UK based investment options. I could of course bring it over and add it to my ETFs here too.

Thanks again.