Need advice on Current account 3% is about to run out

Zola.

Hello

Last year I switched from a terrible Halifax current account to a Santander account as they were giving me a 3% interest on my current account.

I got a letter from them last week to say it will stop in January and the rate will now be very low.

Can anyone advise me on a good current account with a good interest rate?

I need access to my money if anything like car trouble comes up, so I cant have it locked down or inaccessible.

Any advice is much appreciated

missile

3% with LTSB + Vantage, if you can maintain £3,000 > £5000 balance?

Zola.

I have around 3k at the moment. I am trying to save £500 a month.

Does the interest only work if you have 3k + in the account at all times?

DragonQ

Yes, if you keep at least £3000 in there, and transfer in £1000 per month*, you get 3% on the entire balance up to £5000.

*can even be an internal transfer so this should be pretty easy for most people

psychic_teabag

Can you convert your Santander account to their 123 variant ? That has a monthly fee, but for many of us, the cashback from bills paid by D/D more than covers that.

That also pays 3% interest on balances over £3k.

Zola.

DragonQ wrote: »

Yes, if you keep at least £3000 in there, and transfer in £1000 per month*, you get 3% on the entire balance up to £5000.

*can even be an internal transfer so this should be pretty easy for most people

Excellent, will have to look into this.

Do you know the name of the account?

psychic_teabag

Another approach you could take is transfer the existing account to FD or Halifax - just to get the transfer bonus, which I think is roughly equivalent to 3% on £3k for a year (but tax free ?)

You could then just go ahead and open a new Santander 123 account anyway via quidco and get a bung for that too.

Zola.

psychic_teabag wrote: »

Can you convert your Santander account to their 123 variant ? That has a monthly fee, but for many of us, the cashback from bills paid by D/D more than covers that.

That also pays 3% interest on balances over £3k.

Would the £2 monthly fee not cancel out a lot of the interest?

psychic_teabag

Zola. wrote: »

Excellent, will have to look into this.

Do you know the name of the account?

I can't seem to get through to their website at the moment, but it's something obvious like the Santander 123 current account. That's what quidco's calling it, anyway.

EDIT: sorry, I think you were asking about the Lloyds one. It's Lloyds classic current account with vantage. (Vantage is an add-on you can enable on any of their current accounts. There's no downside as far as I know, so I don't know why you have to explicitly enable it.)

psychic_teabag

Zola. wrote: »

Would the £2 monthly fee not cancel out a lot of the interest?

Yes, but if you pay your bills via D/D from that account, the cashback may cover that, and more. I think I'm getting about £4 per month cashback, so I win overall by £2 per month.

EDIT: They have a calculator at http://www.santander-products.co.uk/banking/calculator/123dual.html - but for a fair comparison don't put in the average balance since you don't want to include any interest in the comparison.

(Chances are that the fee will go up or the cashback will be reduced sooner or later, but I'm happy to take the money while it's on offer. No qualms about moving on when it no longer gives a profit.)

Zola.

psychic_teabag wrote: »

Another approach you could take is transfer the existing account to FD or Halifax - just to get the transfer bonus, which I think is roughly equivalent to 3% on £3k for a year (but tax free ?)

You could then just go ahead and open a new Santander 123 account anyway via quidco and get a bung for that too.

Whats the transfer bonus?

To transfer into another account would my santander account still be active? I pay a lot of direct debits from this santander account, would there be much hassle in moving it?