Halifax Savings Query - Instant Access?

Yes they are. However if you have a payment to make that exceeds the amount in your current account you must transfer money the day before (unless you have sufficient overdraft to cover you until the transfer is made).

The time required to open a Sainsburysbank account could be a few weeks if the time it took to set up my 'direct saver' (lower rate of monthly interest) is anything to go by. But once up and running I'm sure it 's a good bet for the next six months.*

Alternatively, if you don't mind being indirect, You can effectively 'sweep' the surplus instantly into an Egg internet savings account (pays 5.50 gross at present with monthly interest option) and the cash is deposited 'instantly' by debit card. The nice thing about this being that interest is paid on both accounts until the DC transaction goes through. For Halifax current account, this will be the next day (excluding Sunday) The best time to transfer is therefore Saturday or the day (excluding Sunday) before a bank holiday. You can't move money instantly from the Egg account - it still take two working days - but you can create payees if you wish or use it to meet the (re)funding requirement (of £1000+) on the Halifax account as it counts as an external account.

With the Halifax account I noticed (I expect it's been mentioned before) that if you don't fund to £1000+ for two consecutive months - and so miss more than a single month - not only do you lose the good rates in those months - you also then have to fund to £1000+ for three consecutive months before the rate goes back up. This could catch out anybody who funds irregularly

*when same-day payments from any account become possible

Yes, they're instant transfers. And the variable Websaver does make a good partner, to the current account, for the circumstances you describe.

But don't let the current account stray over £2500 - otherwise you get 0.01% interest on the excess. And get an agreed overdraft of an amount sufficient to guard against any arithmetical 'whoops' .. if you're regularly moving money.

Halifax run their systems Sat / Sun. So do not 'reserve' amounts, on a Friday night, for DDs due out the following Mon. But nor can you see direct credits, such as salary, due on the Monday - before it happens (unless you want to stay up all Sun night)

Petew, I keep my Halifax balance at £2500. The day before pay day (end of month) I transfer what wage I know will be going in over to my Websaver PLUS and extra £10 so the interest added to the current account on the 1st doesn't take it over the £2500. I've got a few hundred pounds "float" in the Web to top up the current a/c as DDs etc come out.

It's all pretty straightforward (if I can do it!!!). Only thing to watch out for is if a DD is due to come out on, say, the 10th of the month, don't top up from the Web a/c until the next day (ie, 11th) - took me a while to suss out the credit shows up as going into your current a/c BEFORE the DD has come out, thus leaving you with a balance of over £2500 (crafty eh! - surplus might as well be in your Web earning extra pennies rather than the 0.1% they want you to get!)

Hope this makes sense.