Multiple small accounts

Honkycat

Hi,
At the minute I have about 11 small accounts with Halifax Online which I use to save for car insurance, vet fees, holiday, oil etc. I put a varying amount into each every month from £15 to £100 so that when I need money for a specific thing, it's there. My problem is, each of these pays 0.1% interest. Can they be converted into something else to pay more, or is there another bank I could do this with in a more interest efficient way? I do like having everything in the one place on the Halifax site though. There is usually between £100 and £1000 (mostly at the lower end) in these accounts so not massive money. Any ideas?

Thanks.

psychic_teabag

Have you had these for over a year ? Perhaps their bonuses have just expired. Can you just open a new set at the current rate of 2.8% (2.7% of which is bonus), transfer the balances across, then close the old ones ?

Honkycat

I have one of the new 2.8% ones for my main non-ISA savings. Can you open more than one of those? That might be the answer if you can. I'll look into it, thanks.

psychic_teabag

Skipton have a "my savings" range of online accounts - can have as many of these as you want, but paying around the 2.5% mark - no bonus.

IF have the concept of "savings jars" to subdivide one account. So I think that ends up as much the same thing. I think that's 2.5% - no bonus.

An alternative would be to just use a single account and use a spreadsheet to separately track "virtual" pots within that.

If you want to maximise interest, Monmouthshire BS currently have a "flexible saver" at 4% - intended as a regular saver, but is flexible over when you actually deposit. Only 4 withdrawals per year, but you can have multiple accounts - I assume the withdrawal limit is per account, and so you you might be able to organise things around these restrictions. Max of £1000 deposit per month across all accounts.

Since you're with Halifax I assume you're already exploiting the monthly £5 they give away with their reward current accounts ..?

Deanevans

You are using this forum so are at least a little computer literate. ( no offence intended). I would suggest sticking to one account, or depending on how much is involved an ISA and one other, and sorting out your virtual tea caddies either on a sheet of paper or a simple spreadsheet on your PC. I started doing this more than 30 years ago, when the kids arrived and money was extremely tight. You should soon be able to identify money that won't be needed for almost a year and put some into a 1 year fixed rate account to cover that.

Honkycat

psychic_teabag wrote: »

Since you're with Halifax I assume you're already exploiting the monthly £5 they give away with their reward current accounts ..?

Yes, between me and my wife we have 5 of those!

kidmugsy

You might like to check the Principality e-Saver: it lets you set up various "pots" inside it.

uzubairu

kidmugsy wrote: »

You might like to check the Principality e-Saver: it lets you set up various "pots" inside it.

Just recently opened up this account and didn't know about the facility.
I've now set up 3 pots which took just minutes to do.

I have an Intelligent Finance (IF.com) account with multiple jars, but this approach is much simpler to implement.

Thank you.