First Direct 1st Account - I'm confused.

aliasojo

mildred1978 wrote: »

It didn't seem to relate to your question, and the way it was worded read more like a rant/complaint to me.


((£300 x 12) x0.08))/2 = £144. Less tax as applicable.

Ah, difference in interpretation then.

innovate

alanq wrote: »

Funding an e-saver would avoid paying a monthly fee but the £1500 would still be required initially as one of the conditions of claiming £100 joining incentive.

Good point, had forgotten about that!

So to answer another point in the OP: the £1,500 doesn't have to be salary, and it doesn't have to all be paid in one go. E.g. you could use the same, say £500 and transfer it in and out 3 times = £1.5K done. Though you'd need to leave whatever goes into the Reg Saver in the 1st Account since your Standing Order for the e.g. Saver must be on the 1st Account.

If you have the money to "circulate" around, may be also have a look at Halifax - they pay you a fiver a month provided you deposit £1K per month. Similar to FD, it doesn't have to be salary and doesn't have to be paid in in one go. You could use the same £500 from the above example. The £60 you get per year is a pretty decent "interest rate" and pays for a lump of money to be reserved for the transfers (can do these manually or by Standing Orders).

Some people use the same money for even more banks - Nationwide (to get travel insurance, and access to "Flexclusive" offers, e.g. 6% Reg Saver), HSBC (to gain access to 6% Reg Saver), Santander 123 (to get access to cashback), Lloyds (to get Vantage interest). Just mentioning this in case you got extra spare money.

aliasojo

innovate wrote: »

Good point, had forgotten about that!

So to answer another point in the OP: the £1,500 doesn't have to be salary, and it doesn't have to all be paid in one go. E.g. you could use the same, say £500 and transfer it in and out 3 times = £1.5K done. Though you'd need to leave whatever goes into the Reg Saver in the 1st Account since your Standing Order for the e.g. Saver must be on the 1st Account.

If you have the money to "circulate" around, may be also have a look at Halifax - they pay you a fiver a month provided you deposit £1K per month. Similar to FD, it doesn't have to be salary and doesn't have to be paid in in one go. You could use the same £500 from the above example. The £60 you get per year is a pretty decent "interest rate" and pays for a lump of money to be reserved for the transfers (can do these manually or by Standing Orders).

Some people use the same money for even more banks - Nationwide (to get travel insurance, and access to "Flexclusive" offers, e.g. 6% Reg Saver), HSBC (to gain access to 6% Reg Saver), Santander 123 (to get access to cashback), Lloyds (to get Vantage interest). Just mentioning this in case you got extra spare money.

I have 3 Halifax Reward accounts presently and OH also has 3 so we get £30 per month between us by 'cycling' the same initial amount.

I hadn't thought about further cycling involving other banks until now tbh and I only thought about doing it with First Direct because of the 8% account.

I think I'm going to have to look into this more, I do have some spare cash that can be used to cycle from one account to another. I'm obviously way behind.

Thank you.

myth123

If you don't want the new customer opening incentive of £100 (but why wouldn't you?) you don't need to cycle any money into your FD 1st account.

If you want the opening incentive, within the first three months of opening the account you need to deposit £1500 in one month and use their easy switch service transferring at least 2 direct debits or standing orders.

The £1500 does not have to be your salary and it does not need to be done in one payment (as mentioned by another poster).

To avoid the £10 admin fee (which only kicks in after 6 months of opening the account), you can open an e-saver account and deposit £1 in and leave it in there. Other ways of avoiding the £10 admin fee is to transfer £1,500 each month into your 1st account - but it's a lot of hassle compared to opening an e-saver especially when you don't have £1,500 salary.

Once your 1st account is open you can open a regular saver, but this account does not prevent the £10 admin fee, so you would need to open the e-saver in addition to this account.

If you apply online you can set up the easy switching and set up the e-saver on the application form.

aliasojo

myth123 wrote: »

If you don't want the new customer opening incentive of £100 (but why wouldn't you?) you don't need to cycle any money into your FD 1st account.

I can't get the new customer incentive as I had a FD account for a short time a number of years ago. If memory serves me right it was opened to gain whatever incentive was on the go at the time and closed once it had been got but I can't remember much else about it as it was never really used.

I wonder how long they keep customer info for. :think:

IJP20

aliasojo wrote: »

I wonder how long they keep customer info for. :think:

First Direct keep records of customers since they opened, they have a long memory!

Mikazaru

Sorry to jump on your thread, I've been thinking about switching to FD for their regular saver as well, the First Directory at £12 is that a compulsory fee for the account or is it an optional extra do you know?

[Deleted User]

Mikazaru wrote: »

Sorry to jump on your thread, I've been thinking about switching to FD for their regular saver as well, the First Directory at £12 is that a compulsory fee for the account or is it an optional extra do you know?

Optional extra.

Mikazaru

Thank you, think I will transfer there then.

jennifernil

aliasojo wrote: »

I can't get the new customer incentive as I had a FD account for a short time a number of years ago. If memory serves me right it was opened to gain whatever incentive was on the go at the time and closed once it had been got but I can't remember much else about it as it was never really used.

I wonder how long they keep customer info for. :think:

They do indeed have a long memory! We had a joint account way back before they introduced the monthly fee. We only had OH's expenses going in, so often less than £1500, so we closed the account.

Really it was only OH that used the account, and we didn't even have broadband in those days.

When I applied for a 1st Account last year, just to get the 8%RS, they dredged up the old log-ins!

Expected me to remember mine! Something I had never used. Took a while to sort out the mess, but we got there eventually (about 2 weeks).

I now have the 1stAccount, the £1 in the savings account, and the 8% RS. I only have a small pension income, about £50 pw, but had no problem opening the accounts.