Monthly income below £1000?

montycat_2

Anyone know of a decent current account with cheque book that will accept a monthly income of below £1,000 and pay a decent interest ?

Struggling to find one .

Thanks

YorkshireBoy

Alliance & Leicester Premier Direct.

Make an extra £25 (£50 if you're lucky) by being referred by a 'friend'.

johnmoney05

My monthly salary is lower than £1000. I have opened current accounts with Barclays, Cahoot, A&L, Llyods TSB, Halifax, Nationwide and HSBC (which is closing). And I am going to close Barclays and Cahoot soon. Just too many debit cards and cheque books around...

Gordon_the_Moron

If you see a much better deal for accounts where you need to earn over £1000 you can cheat, just withdraw the money as cash and pay it back in, you need to be well organised and it needs to be a lot better deal to be worth the hassle. If you earn nearly £1000 but not quite it isn't too hard. You can also do it by online banking, transferring to another account then back (check terms and conditions, it usually needs to go to another bank/societies account)

The A&L deal is good too, but apparently it is getting even better from September, 6% in credit on the current account and 12% on the regular saver.

cheerfulcat

Hi, montycat,

Just about any bank will let you open a current account, you don't need to pay into it regularly. Unfortunately they don't pay much in the way of interest. You could open a current account and associated e-savings account with the Nationwide and move the money between the two, though.

Moggles_2

You could open a current account and associated e-savings account with the Nationwide and move the money between the two

I have a Nationwide FLEXACCOUNT and I'm pretty sure you have to pay in new money from a non-NW account to maintain the higher interest rate.

I'm also with the Halifax, which is currently the market leader in terms of interest (5.00 per cent gross, 5.12 AER). You can certainly move money between accounts at the Hally to qualify for this rate.

cheerfulcat

I have a Nationwide FLEXACCOUNT and I'm pretty sure you have to pay in new money from a non-NW account to maintain the higher interest rate.

Yes, that's why I suggested moving the money from the current to the e-savings account which pays 4.55% on £1 and up. It can be moved back to the current account when it is required.

Gordon_the_Moron

Indeed, the flexaccount pays a lot less than the E-saver if you pay in less than £1000 per month BUT it doesn't charge you like A&L do for underfunding so moving to and from the E-saver would work.

CopperPlate_2

As has been said, if you earn nearly £1000 you can withdraw that amount and re-deposit it straightaway to put you over the "£1000 deposit level per month" in order to trigger the higher interest payment for the month. If it's substantially less than £1000 you have to ask if it's really worth the hassle for a few extra pence? With Nationwide, the levels are tiered anyway, and of course withdrawing to and from e-savings doesn't count as a "deposit" to your account for interest rate purposes so that means using an external account to move the money back and forth into each month, which in turn means a few days of the money hanging about in limbo earning 0 interest if you use BACS to do it via the internet.

baldbloke_2

This point has been covered msny times.

If the current account has a linked internet savings account then that can in effect become the interest paying 'current account'.

With the Halifax I use the current account for DDs - a Cashcard Websaver at4% for weekly cash - and an ordinary Websaver at 4.5% for every penny over £50 that is not required in my current account. The fact I do not qualify for the high interest current account because of my low wage tells me that I would not be making huge gains from the 'high' interest anyway since the sums involved are a few hundred rather than a few thousand pounds.

An accurate Cashflow projection keeps the accounts properly balanced.

From the Websaver I can transfer accumulated savings to anywhere I choose.

I imagine most banks and building societies operate a similar combination of accounts which for those with smaller sums to deposit make light of the constant reinvention of high interest current accounts which seem to be just one of the current obsessions.