I have three Halifax Reward accounts but can no longer afford to pay in £1000 a month

savingsuperstar

I opened three Halifax Reward accounts but now I'm paying heavily into a pension and repaying a small debt to my parents I can no longer afford to credit it with £1000 and bounce it about to get the reward. It will be at least six months until I am able to do this, and possibly even longer.

Qs:

Will I get charged for not crediting it? Currently I'm not putting anything in at all.

Should I close the accounts if I can't use them for six months? I'm only in two minds because once I do have the capital to get the rewards the £15 a month will be worth more than any interest I'll earn on £1000 savings.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

BigAndy_79

You won't get charged for not crediting by £1000, but the accounts will probably re-designate or migrate to the standard account after 3 or 4 months of having not funded with the required amount.

savingsuperstar

Oh good, thanks for that. What if I don't credit them with any money at all?

missile

What is the balance? Why not withdraw £1K to a.n.other bank and cycle it around?

usedandabused

what i want to know is HOW did you manage to get THREE reward accounts with the same institution?

I thought their policy was 2, whether they be sole or joint or a combination of both?

scottishblondie

Having looked on the Halifax website there isn't any information about how long you can leave them dormant. I wouldn't close them as these days you can only open one in your own name, if you can't credit them I'd just leave them and see what happens.

I know this would be a bit of pain - but could you spare a smaller amount to bounce about? You would need to do a lot more transfers depending on the amount you use, but it would still be possible to credit one or more of the accounts with a total of £1000 over the course of a month.

savingsuperstar

The balance is a couple of pounds in each! I've only just started earning after a long period of unemployment so I have no capital.

And I got three because I applied before they changed the restrictions to two.

savingsuperstar

scottishblondie wrote: »

I know this would be a bit of pain - but could you spare a smaller amount to bounce about? You would need to do a lot more transfers depending on the amount you use, but it would still be possible to credit one or more of the accounts with a total of £1000 over the course of a month.

Ooh. Now that is an option. My rent doesn't go out until the end of the month so that's £500 which I could cycle about the three. Since even a transfer from another Halifax reward account counts as a credit I'm sure it would only take a week or so.

Thanks!

apt

It would take far less than that. Internal Halifax transfers are instant. Providing the £500 is coming from an account that sends and receives faster payments you should be able to do it in less than half an hour.

scottishblondie

Glad to help, I would hate to see someone not taking full advantage of their 3 reward accounts! I'm actually rather jealous of people who have more than one

savingsuperstar

apt wrote: »

It would take far less than that. Internal Halifax transfers are instant. Providing the £500 is coming from an account that sends and receives faster payments you should be able to do it in less than half an hour.

Do you have to leave the money in each account overnight for it to count? That's what I used to do.

Sadly Nationwide are not faster payments friendly. Rubbish!