123 Santander Account/ portfolio investment for income

Mark25

Hey all,

So I am thinking of switching banks as I am a little hacked of with lloyds tsb and the in branch customer service.

I am looking to go to Santander and the 123 current account with a (potential) £500 deposit to the portfolio investment for income.

Bank account I am ok with, but I'd really like some advice on the investment account. Is it worth taking out or should I be better putting my money else where? And how do I work out the returns I could expect?

If I can get the £500 saved and away into an account that I can visibly see working for me it will motivate me to clear the rest of my debts and sort out the rest of my financial life.

Any advice would be just grand!

innovate

You can have multiple current accounts, and there's little reason to have all your savings/investments with one bank - - the concept of "my bank" might have served our parents well, but nowadays you get a much better overall deal if you move about.

I'd never take out any investment with a bank - would always do self-investment in things like tracker funds (using ISA and /or SIPP wrappers) on a self-trade platform, such as Hargreaves Lansdown or similar.

Lloyds is quite quite for their Vantage accounts, and their online functions are nice. They can become a bit possessive and make you think you should have all your money with them.

Santander 123 is good IMO, online is fine, their savings interest rates are good.

Halifax pays you a five a month for just cycling £1K/mth through the current account. First Direct and HSBC offer great Regular Savers if fed from their current accounts. Nationwide gives you Eurpoean Travel Insurance for cycling £750/mth through a Flexaccount, and from time to time had other great offers for Flexaccount customers, such as the 4.25% ISA they had last April. Plenty of Building Societies offer interest rates that banks don't match.

With Faster Payment, and a bit of good record keeping, it's no problem transferring money between your accounts.

There's lots more detail to read about this in the MSE forum

innovate

BugsyBrowne wrote: »

Santander are sure you really want to join these Spanish wanke*s.

Ah, forgot to say that no doubt the Santander-basher-brigade will soon show up. And they haven't disappointed, with yet another utterly unhelpful post, this time from BugsyBrowne.

BugsyBrowne

innovate wrote: »

Ah, forgot to say that no doubt the Santander-basher-brigade will soon show up. And they haven't disappointed, with yet another utterly unhelpful post, this time from BugsyBrowne.

Cheers

I've never even banked with them but feel like bashing a bank.

Mark25

@BugsyBrowne - Feel free to qualify you're slight racist comment based on business facts and figures which would make them a poor institution. If you can't then you do nothing more than prove you made a mindless comment which can't be substantiated and I will have zero respect for your comments or opinions.

@inovate - hey, thank you for the well written reply. Your points are well reasoned and made me think. On CNBC RT and different stock apps (also news sources) I am up by 72.6% on "initial" investment. TBH it was only the paper game to see how I'd go. How would I go about starting a self trade platform, do I need credit check or anything? Where can I start my learning? - thanks again!!

innovate

There's a Savings & Investments Board on here, where different platforms, and different investments on different platforms have been discussed.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=17

I could also recommend monevator.com - they have a review of discount brokers.