Regular Savings arnt all that good in my opinion

newcastleneil

My Barclays regular savings account has just matured .After paying in the max of £250 a month for the full term I received £70.55p in intrest .I will not be opening any more of these as it hardly seems worth the hassle of opening one:mad:

premierfella

Assuming this is the same as the Monthly Savings account I hold, which pays a rate that is fixed for 12 months, the rate of interest paid on maturity surely should not have come as a surprise to you

Personally, I am more than happy with the rate I am getting on the one I opened last year, which is paying a very competitive return (IMO).

Hadrian

Be aware that when the 12 months is up the rate drops to a MoreforMore savings account, which is a joke!. So cancel it ASAP. I phoned them and did it in 2 mins

mickymellon

its been pointless for a long time which is why there are more posts here about shares and people using their s/s ISA's

I prefer to invest in shares with the possibility of generally making 20 - 50% returns than having money sitting there making upto 4

jimbow25

I like them because any account you can fund by standing order is good for keeping you in the savings habit. So long as you are happy with the minimum deposit/withdrawal conditions it's a good place to let money accumulate out of your sallary and you usually get a bit more interest than you would have got elsewhere.

The admin is a bit of a headache though - the three I have are 6%, 5% and 5% (all opened during last year) and I can't be bothered to run any at less than 5%. £250 at 5% you can expect about £65 net interest - any less than that and there's minimal gain over an isntant access account.

I certainly wouldn't go as far as drip-feeding savings from an account paying 3% at the moment though - the gain in interest would be pretty small for quite a lotof hassle. I'm paying part of my salary somewhere each month, it may as well be into a regular savings account.

I don't think you can compared like for like with Stocks and shares ISAs they are a different product altogether.

Milarky

Regular savers are like 'complex financial instruments' to some people. But another term to describe them is that they 'take effort' (and people are lazy) since you have to open several to be able to benefit from good rates on a significant sum - and then have to 'manage' the standing orders out - as well as be aware of any potential pitfalls with individual accounts as they all carry slightly different terms and conditions.

For larger sums of money fixed (term) rate deposits make sense. However with rates now so low the differential between 12 months RS and 12 month FD is about an extra 50% interest - not to be sniffed at....

Reaper

Can't say I ever bother with them because they last such a short time. If they came out with longer term ones where you could really build up some nice cumulative interest I'd go for it, but a year is too short for me.

Mikeyorks

If it's 'new money' ..... where else are you going to get around the 4.5% best deal at the moment!

If it's re-cycled money ...... then you need to look at the net interest earned between the feeder account and the RS account. And - currently - you would normally decide not to bother?

But you need to be aware of what your signing up to (and there's no excuse with a variety of threads and a specific article to help :-
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/best-regular-savings-accounts ) .......... clearly the OP couldn't be bothered to do some basic research?

Mr_K

Regular savers, even when you could get 10% they were a waste of time.

Mikeyorks

Regular theme of yours. You don't seem to be able to get your head around the differential between new and re-cycled money. For the former they're still at the top of the tree - if you get the right one.

For the latter - they're fine at the right time (Halifax RS at 10% last year + an extra 2% = 12%, if you had £5k in a 6.25% enabling account + a feeder account up to 5%!) ...... but now is not the right time.

rb10

Reaper wrote: »

Can't say I ever bother with them because they last such a short time. If they came out with longer term ones where you could really build up some nice cumulative interest I'd go for it, but a year is too short for me.

http://www.stroudandswindon.co.uk/regular_saver_account.aspx