After Nationwide FlexDirect 5%

brightonman123

saw a leafleft for Marks & Spencer, plugging their bank accounts-

transferring to their monthly fee (£10 or £15?) account gets £100 sign up voucher, shopping discounts etc, plus 6% (i think) interest..

May only be worth doing if regular M&S customer, and have large savings, to cover the fees- min £2,000 gets £120 interest?

brightonman123

http://bank.marksandspencer.com/explore/about-us/business-overview/?WT.ac=MASM_BAN_HPNFB

Gromitt

brightonman123 wrote: »

large savings, to cover the fees- min £2,000 gets £120 interest?

You can save a maximum of £3,000 at a maximum of £250 per month, so about £93 in interest, before tax.

Chjaka

I opened up a third 123 account before the recent limit of two came in so I could move the money from seven Flexdirect accounts into it when therate on them drops next March. Even with the £2 charge it still works out at 2.85% easy access.

anoncol

how does 3 123 accounts help?

innovate

3 x up to £20K = up to £60K @ 3% AER? (until it drops)

Chjaka

anoncol wrote: »

how does 3 123 accounts help?

The 123 accounts have one of the top interest rates around at the present time especially on large sums, hence a lot of people are using them as a savings account in lieu of the atrocious rates available elsewhere, for this reason Santander have started limiting them to two per customer.

Unfortunately they only pay interest on balances up to £20K and a few people here will have opened up the maximum of four Flexdirect accounts, some even up to eight if they have a partner they trust. In 8 months time, when the rate drops to 0.8%, they will have a potential £10K-£20K that they will need to re-house quickly and having a spare 123 Acc available at this time will be very helpful, assuming it's still paying 3% at that time.

There's definitely worse places to put your £5K when the Nationwide rate ends and if you already have one that's nearing full it's useful to know that you can open another one, a fact I failed to realise until I read it on here.

anoncol

I did wonder if it was the upper interest limit.