Gap Year/New Student Savings

Alex16

Hi,

I am a student currently on a GAP year before going to University. I have been working all year and have managed to get together a few thousand pounds to use whilst i am at Uni. My question is where would it be best for me to put this where i can access it relativly easily and with no charges but earn a resnoable amount of interest on it monthly? I am new to this so am not really sure where to start at all so any help would be very usefull!

Cheers

melancholly

an ISA is usually the best bet for high interest rates, but you should also have a look around once you are a student, because you should be able to get gross interest rates so something else may prove to be better - but that could vary considerably between now and september/october

Savvy_Sue

The main thing is what you have identified yourself: where you can access it relatively easily. I'm afraid nothing beats checking the terms and conditions: with some accounts you can only withdraw so many times a year before you're either charged or moved to a lower rate of interest. And then do you want to be able to withdraw cash from this account, or to be able to transfer funds online or by phone? Check how long either of those will normally take, and make sure you're sufficiently organised: ie if it takes 10 days to move funds, you need to be thinking 10 days ahead.

Looking at Martin's main articles on savings would be a good start.