Santander 123 Account

innovate

I do my shifting mostly by SO. Been going w/o a hitch for almost 3 years now. Though you do have to put your serious thinking cap on when setting up the SOs, and then monitor every month that they happened as expected. I would tend to agree that it takes less effort overall if you do it all manually once a month.

tushingham

Thanks Yorkshire boy and innovate. Although I keep these accounts upto the max, so no probs about o/d, I think I'll give it some serious thought tonight over a cuppa

Thanks again
t

YorkshireBoy

tushingham wrote: »

Although I keep these accounts upto the max, so no probs about o/d

So the worst that can happen if a SO fails is you lose some credit interest...which will be pennies on £1K for a few days.

Then again, if you're logging in to check the money has arrived (as innovate suggests above) you're not really running a 'sit back and relax' operation, and so you may as well make the transfers manually anyway?

Jan_V

Thanks again to Innovate and also KTF and Yorkshire Boy. Good point on the 3-4 day lead time on the SO's too, will do. Will also look into doing manual transfers. Cheers everyone.

innovate

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

Then again, if you're logging in to check the money has arrived (as innovate suggests above) you're not really running a 'sit back and relax' operation, and so you may as well make the transfers manually anyway?

I have AccountUnity doing the logging in for me - i.e. I have all the account balances on one screen (well, one-and-a-half after the latest bout of new accounts, lol).

I then go through my MS Money which is automatically populated with all the SOs I have set up (once I have registered the SOs in MS Money). I mark each of the expected account transactions as "reconciled", and add any other transactions as necessary/appropriate.

You could of course use another method to record your account movements - spreadsheet, pen & paper, just rely on your account statements - - whichever suits you best.

Whichever way you choose to do it, I don't think it's "sit back and relax". I believe it is crucial that you can tell at any one point in time which of your money is where.

Also, I like to keep the room for errors at a minimum. That's the reason I opted to do my monthly shuffles by SOs. I now have over 20 of them to do each month, and having them as SOs gives me the peace of mind I want. I don't want to wake up at 3:30am because I am not really sure I did all my transfers - -- much rather check at 3:30pm whether it's all gone as expected.

But it's all just personal preference. In the end, you have to make sure your required payments have been made.

Looter

I'm thinking of upgrading to the 123 current account. Does anyone know if the interest is paid monthly or annually? Thanks.

innovate

Monthly, on the anniversary of your account opening. When they also charge you the £2 monthly account fee.

xxdeebeexx

innovate wrote: »

...and again, in case you don't know: Halifax require 2 DDs (to different recipients) from May 1; no DDs, no fivers, and likely to be downgraded to a "non-fiver" account.

Sorry to hijack the thread... I was wondering about the Halifax DDs- I have set up 2 DDs to myself to go to 2 different Tesco accounts... will this count as 2 different recipients?

tia

dx

innovate

xxdeebeexx wrote: »

Sorry to hijack the thread... I was wondering about the Halifax DDs- I have set up 2 DDs to myself to go to 2 different Tesco accounts... will this count as 2 different recipients?

tia

dx

I don't think it will. The DD identifier is on company level, not account level.

Happy to be proven wrong, but the guy who originally tipped us off about the T&C change, a Halifax employee, stated explicitly is must go to two different OINs. I think all Tesco accounts have the same OIN. You will definitely be on the safe side if you add another, non-Tesco, DD. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4168667

More on OINs: http://www.aptbacs.co.uk/Downloads/PDF/Direct%20Debit%20Management%20Guide.pdf

Further Qs about the Halifax changes in the Halifax T&C change thread please

pete_l

I might have missed this already (I did quickly scan through the posts in this thread) but can you just use the account to credit £500 each month and take the interest (provided balance is over £1000, although I'll most likely have £3000+ to get the highest rate) or do you have to set up some direct debits to get the interest rate on the account balance?

I know if I don't set up any direct debits I wouldn't get any cashback but do you need to have those set up? I would eventually get round to transferring bill payments over but maybe not for a month or two.