How to get the most bang for my buck!

nickyhammerton

After years of debt and worry, me and my other half are now about to start saving for a deposit for a house :T

We have a joint current account with Natwest, but they only pay me 0.5% on my isa (good job I have no money in it, lol)

We want to save £400 a month, and dont need it for two years.

I have looked at ISA's, regular savers accounts and fixed term....and now I feel like this :undecided

We both pay tax at normal rate and I did try to get a First Direct account so that I could get the 8% savings account, but they obviously didnt like the look of my credit score yet :embarasse

Anyone got any smart ideas????

HappyMJ

Regular savers will be the best bet. Get 1 each and each put in £200 per month into it. After the 12 months put the proceeds into an ISA and start again.

psychic_teabag

If you're under 35 you could get a Santander first-home-saver, which is a regular saver paying 5%. Unlike many other regular savers, it's open-ended rather than ending after a year, and allows an initial lump-sum deposit of up to £5k. Max monthly deposit is £300 but presumably you could open one each.

As basic-rate taxpayers, 5% on a taxable account beats an instant-access ISA (3% at the moment, but that could of course change).

Note that many on here advise against having any dealings with Santander.

To get a little more bang to the buck, could (try to) open a Halifax reward current account each (plus I think you can have a joint account). then just push £1000 through them all each month on the way to whereever else it needs to end up. They'll give you £5 per account per month (after tax)

padington

Save it in silver at bullionvault.com. Its a bit of a gamble but i think a good one right now. Keep an eye on it every day and follow the silver thread in this forum. You can place stops if you want to ensure that if you are away for the day and the price plummets the computer automatically sells for you. It could be another very good year for silver. If you want to hedge your bet a bit then get some gold as well.