Is this best place for savings?

wannaberich41

Hi
Ive currently got my savings in a online lloyds tsb account. but do not appear to be getting alot of interest per month. Where is the best place to have money for saving? We require instanct access to it if we need it. What i do is have very little in my current chq account and when i know a bill is due, i move money from online saver into chq account. i'm trying to get the interest on the highest amount as possible. My husband thinks that all banks are cons as he was (his and my words) miss sold a pep and was told that it would make x amount. This didnt happen and after 10 years is not alot different now as to what it was when he put it in. We are aware that it works on the stock market so goes up and down all the time.

Also are banks or building socities best for saving?

Any advise would be very much apprecaited.

psychic_teabag

Roughly how much do you have in savings ? Assuming your current account is with Lloyds, you can get a good rate using the "vantage" option. Currently you can get 4% for balances from £5000 to £7000, or 3% on balances from £3000 to £5000. However, they're going to be dropping the top tier soon, but 3% is still a pretty good rate - I don't know of any instant-access savings accounts that beat that at the moment.

Their standard esaver account looks like it pays 1.6% for small balances, or 2.5% for 10k or more. But if you've had one of these for more than a year, the bonus rate may have expired.

Lloyds also have an "incentive saver" account, offering 2.8% or so, though it doesn't seem to be well documented. google for "Lloyds incentive saver" finds it, but I've not yet seen a link to it from within the Lloyds site. My OH was offered it during a login, but I haven't been offered it yet. You could try asking them about it. It's not the best rate around, but gives you the convenience of staying within Lloyds.

Other than that, just have a look at the comparison sites (or Martin's MSE articles) to find the best instant-access accounts around. The best rate AFAIK is Santander, but they tend to be more trouble than they're worth. Post Office also has a good rate, but their service also leaves a bit to be desired. Not all accounts support faster payments, so it depends on whether that's important to you - eg tesco does, and it is literally as fast to move money between a current account and tesco saver as it is to move between accounts within a bank.

One other trick is to open Halifax reward current accounts - you and your husband can have one each, plus one joint. Then just push £1000 in and out of each account once a month, and they'll give you £5 per month per account.

Oh - and have you used your ISA allowances for this year ? If not, you'll have to hurry !