Halifax £5 per month current account

guitarman001

OK, I'll follow through with FirstDirect then - wasn't aware of that. I thought they wanted to do the bank switching service there and then. It seems you get £100 if you completely switch bank account, e.g. I'd have to close my Lloyds account when moving over. I have THREE Vantage accounts, one of which is practically empty. Perhaps I could just close that one?! Then I could get £100!! Actually don't think this'd work as you need to take the salary payments from work straight into that account...

I'll also check out other ISAs. The pain with ISAs is the transferring after the year. At least with current accounts and savers money can be shifted more easily.

Apologies for all the posts - just back from hols and trying to get this all sorted out as soon as possible.


EDIT - I again exited the FirstDirect application after it said I had to have an average of £1.5k in my account every month (if I put it in and out same day that's not average £1.5k for the month!) PLUS if you forget to do this, you get charged £10 a month for banking with them! I'll have to think on it more.

guitarman001

In general if you want to close any account after a year... how painful is that process? I've never done it. I assume it's a LONG phone call?

DragonQ

I have a Halifax Reward account, a Nationwide FlexAccount and also a Lloyds TSB Vantage account. I use the Vantage as my main current account and simply transfer money between the three, once a month, to fulfill the minimum deposit requirements. This gives me £5 per month from Halifax and a 4.25% Flexclusive ISA from Nationwide.

The Vantage gives me 3%, which isn't as high as my savings account (3.2%) but the way I see it is I'd rather lose 0.2% on ~£4k of my savings and get a debit card access to the money (plus be able to have direct debits coming out) than get potential overdraft fees if I forget to transfer into my current account before a direct debit goes out or whatever.

Gromitt

guitarman001 wrote: »

EDIT - I again exited the FirstDirect application after it said I had to have an average of £1.5k in my account every month (if I put it in and out same day that's not average £1.5k for the month!) PLUS if you forget to do this, you get charged £10 a month for banking with them! I'll have to think on it more.

Read the T&Cs... "OR you have another suitable product with us.". An eSaver is a suitable product. Deposit £1 in that and no bank charges even if you never deposit £1500 in your 1st account.

guitarman001 wrote: »

In general if you want to close any account after a year... how painful is that process? I've never done it. I assume it's a LONG phone call?

Regular saver auto closes after a year, so thats no big deal.

Current accounts you can close in less than 5 minutes. Co-op was like "I'm closing my account, I've transferred to another bank". "Oh, which bank is that?" "I'd rather not say", "Oh ok, I'll just check your account, ok it's zero balance, all done. Please drop your cheque book and debit card into a local branch or destroy them yourself.".

MoneySaverLog

You don't have to close your Lloyds TSB account just agree to the easy switch service with first direct to move your direct debits and standing orders over.

Lloyds may even match it with M&S vouchers, I seem to remember reading a post about this. I'm not eligible for the £100 offer but was thinking about doing the easy switch from a lloyds account to see if they'd offer it to stay :-))))

Perelandra

guitarman001 wrote: »

I don't understand.

I'll get £5 net each month. That £5 isn't getting taxed... If I put £5 into an ISA

The ISA point has already been answered, but I had something else to add-

The £5 per month has further tax to pay if you're a higher rate taxpayer. It's £5 net of basic rate tax only.

Perelandra

MoneySaverLog wrote: »

Lloyds may even match it with M&S vouchers, I seem to remember reading a post about this. I'm not eligible for the £100 offer but was thinking about doing the easy switch from a lloyds account to see if they'd offer it to stay :-))))

Lloyds offered me £150 M&S (or John Lewis) vouchers not to close the account, which when I hesitated over changed to £50 cash plus £100 vouchers.

Which was nice, as I hadn't intended to close the Lloyds account...!

guitarman001

Just a quick point - if I have a 1st account but use the e-saver in order to get to this 8% regular saver rate.... and never use the 1st account... am I not liable for a £10 monthly charge for using the 1st account, as the terms are that I have to put in £1.5k per month? Will read it in more detail.

MoneySaverLog

Not if you open up a e-saver account with £1 as well as the regular saver 8% :-)

Gromitt

guitarman001 wrote: »

am I not liable for a £10 monthly charge for using the 1st account, as the terms are that I have to put in £1.5k per month? Will read it in more detail.

No, as I've said above, it doesn't apply if you have a eSavings account, as that is regarded as an 'additional product'. As long as you put £1 in that account, your fine.