Halifax Regular Saver or Web Saver

arkwright_2

I have just had a meeting with a Halifax Personal Financial Adviser who has told me that I am better feeding my monthly savings of £250 into my Halifax websaver (at 4.9%) than my Halifax regular monthly saver (at 7%), is it just me or is this incorrect?

rchddap1

Depends on whether the figures you have quoted attract any tax.....ie, is it 4.9% / 7% net or gross

arkwright_2

Sadly I would pay tax on both.

grumbler

arkwright wrote:

I have just had a meeting with a Halifax Personal Financial Adviser who has told me that I am better feeding my monthly savings of £250 into my Halifax websaver (at 4.9%) than my Halifax regular monthly saver (at 7%), is it just me or is this incorrect?

If you do not have more than £250 to save every month, his advice is wrong unless you need easy access to your savings before regular saving account matures in a year.

newfoundglory

arkwright wrote:

I have just had a meeting with a Halifax Personal Financial Adviser who has told me that I am better feeding my monthly savings of £250 into my Halifax websaver (at 4.9%) than my Halifax regular monthly saver (at 7%), is it just me or is this incorrect?

Yes, its incorrect.

Even if you were to close the Regular Saver (7% gross) before maturity and therefore not get the 7pc, you would still earn the websaver rate on your savings (4.9% gross) which you had managed to put into the Regular Saver account before it was closed because you missed a payment or wanted to access your cash.

If you have more than £250 a month to save, then put the first 250 into a Regular Saver, then the remainder (providing its more than £5, into Halifax Monthly Saver).

Of course, you should check your position as taxpayer first, and see if you would earn more by using your Cash ISA allowance, as the rates quoted above are gross.

Halifax Regular Saver

Although you cannot make withdrawals from your Halifax Regular Saver, if you do need access to your money you can close your account at any time. If you close we will pay interest up to the date of closure at the rate for the Halifax Web Saver (no card) account.

If you fail to make a payment of at least £25 by standing order to reach the Regular Saver account on or before the 28th of each month, we will close your account, pay interest up to the date of closure at the current rate for Halifax Web Saver (no card) account and transfer the account balance to your linked easy access savings account.

http://www.halifax.co.uk/savings/impinfo.shtml#hxrs

ED

Arkwright - I can make sense of the Halifax PFA's comment only if (like me) your fingers are cold and you accidentally typed "than my Halifax regular monthly saver", but meant to type "then my Halifax reg..." - ie deposit as much as you can, each month, in Web Saver, then feed the Regular Saver via Internal Standing Order, either direct from Web Saver (if still allowed), or possibly from Web Saver to current account to Regular Saver.

arkwright_2

ED wrote:

Arkwright - I can make sense of the Halifax PFA's comment only if (like me) your fingers are cold and you accidentally typed "than my Halifax regular monthly saver", but meant to type "then my Halifax reg..." - ie deposit as much as you can, each month, in Web Saver, then feed the Regular Saver via Internal Standing Order, either direct from Web Saver (if still allowed), or possibly from Web Saver to current account to Regular Saver.

No he claimed that it was pointless doing a monthly saver and would be better off just putting the £250 a month into the web saver!! The fact that I did not take his advise regarding Investing my money the way he wanted may have something to do with it.

Many thanks for everyones help.

newfoundglory

Be careful not to confuse Regular Saver with Monthly Saver :beer:

I always come out of Halifax confused; yesterday the cashier behind the counter tried to convince me 5.50% gross on £500 deposits a month into their Monthly Saver account "wasn't bad, but its not particularly great". I have an ISA, I have a Regular Saver, and I don't pay tax because i'm a student with no job... I swear, Halifax really don't know what they are talking about!

Maybe they wanted to try and mis-sell me some overpriced stock-market investment with high fees, which is most likely going to seriously underperform their own savings accounts? :eek:

ED

newfoundglory - you got me excited, thinking Monthly Saver now pays 5.50% gross, but a visit to Halifax's Interest Rates webpage confirms it remains at 5.30% (5.34% AER).

On all counts, it's sad to learn from you + arkwright Halifax continues to employ branch staff who don't understand their own products.

newfoundglory

You get a 0.2% bonus, taking it to 5.5%.... if you are under 21 :beer:

newfoundglory

http://www.halifax.co.uk/savings/impinfo.shtml#under21