Savings accounts allowing direct debits

fridgee

Hiya,
I was wondering if anyone either knew how to find out, or knew themselves, which savings accounts allow direct debits to be set up to them for example paying ultilities etc each month from a lump sum saving without having to transfer money over to a current account?
Thanks

LeeSouthEast

I'm still trying to work out why you'd want to pay bills out of your savings account.

I don't know of any although I'm sure they must exist. But I'm actively questioning your thought process in wanting to do this?

psychic_teabag

I assume you want to have the flexibility of a current account but with the interest rate of a savings account. How big a lump sum did you have in mind ? Some people treat Lloyds vantage current account as a savings account for up to 7k (interest 4% I think), as long as you setup the necessary monthly transfers to keep it alive. For more than that, some savings accounts allow a regular withdrawl to an external account. (eg Intelligent Finance). Others allow payments to be setup manually in the future (eg tesco). So you could use these to drip money to a vantage account. Depends what you are trying to acheive. (Low effort to set it up, or some effort to set up automated transfers then leave it to look after itself.)

oldfella

direct debits can only be setup to a current account - you can BACS out of Tesco and others. Agree with above Lloyds vantage is your best choice.

anselld

A&L Premier Direct Current Account.
Pay in £500 per month.
Get 6% interest up to £2500 balance plus all banking facilities.

fridgee

Basically my partner and I both recieve student grants each quarter and he also gets a salary from a part time job. We want to put enough money out of our grants each quarter for that quarter's regualr bills in a seperate account so the bills take care of themselves and we are only left with our disposable income in the current account, but since its quite a bit of money as a lump sum to pay the bills we would like to get a good interest on it, but cant use the high interest current accounts as cant pay in a set amount each month only every few months. I though it was possible to set up direct debits to saving accounts since ING ask you to set one up to your current or is this a special situation? Thanks for all the responses so far.

Baldur

fridgee wrote: »

I though it was possible to set up direct debits to saving accounts since ING ask you to set one up to your current or is this a special situation?

ING uses the Direct Debit authorisation to 'pull' funds from your current account into the ING savings account, not to pay funds out from the ING savings account.

psychic_teabag

fridgee wrote: »

but cant use the high interest current accounts as cant pay in a set amount each month only every few months.

It doesn't have to be a new 1000 each month... eg set up a lloyds vantage account and one or more halifax reward current account(s), and once a month just move 1000 from lloyds to halifax and immediately back again. Halifax will give you 5 for your trouble, and it will be enough to keep lloyds happy too.

Unfortunately, it sounds like you may not be able to keep the balance in the optimal 5000-7000 range if you are getting money quarterly rather than monthly.

If you are students, can you get hold of an account giving a free overdraft ? That way, the bills can come out of the bank's money, rather than yours, and you can leave your money in a savings account. So basically just pay the bills money into the bank in arrears, rather than in advance ? Or set up a savings account to trickle money from grant into the bank over the quarter, to supplement the income from the part-time job, so that on average the balance is around 0, but you don't have to worry unduly about actually being above or below water on any given day. eg citibank is currently paying the highest instant-access interest, and allows you to set up a standing order to (one ?) linked current account.

noh

You can set up direct debits from Halifax Websaver accounts but the interest rate is low so hardly worth it.