Saving to buy first home

Ryan_f_3

Hello everyone,

Me and my girlfriend have started saving to buy our first house.

We have set ourselves a target of 1 year to save enough money to have the deposit. We have £1000 to start with and looking at saving £1000 a month.

Where is the best place to save our money?

I have been looking at the Santander 123 account and leaning towards this idea I think?

Any advice would be much appreciated!

colsten

123 sounds a good idea but you could squeeze out a few extra pounds if you exploited the 4 and 5% accounts, too.

Check this article (ignore all references to ISAs because ISAs don't pay you as much as the current accounts):

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/savings-loophole

Definitely go for the Halifax, as you can have 3 between the two of you - £180 a year literally free money. Not an account to keep any money in, though, as interest rate is 0%.

Also exploit those 5% TSB Plus accounts before you settle for the 3% ers. You can have 2 sole accounts each, and 2 joint ones (though you may not want to go for joint accounts at this stage ....it is a massive commitment to each other!).

Also check out the joining bonuses for switching accounts - FD, Halifax, Coop, M&S, and via Quidco/TCB cashback: Santander and Nationwide.

You'll need some DDs for some of the accounts but that isn't difficult - just set up a couple of Tesco savings accounts and pull a bit of money into them (they do this via DD) from your current account(s).

Threads on all these accounts on the forum.

Ryan_f_3

Thanks for all that advice!

Will go off and do some reading up on all you mentioned!

jamesd

You can also use the 123 account if it will pay you more in rebates for bills than the cost. No rule requires you to have only one current account.

bristol_pilot

Wherever you choose to save, don't have a joint account. If you split, one of you could quite legally withdraw all the money or even run up an overdraft which the other is liable to pay.

Ryan_f_3

Thanks for the advice everyone!

This may be a stupid question but I'll ask it anyway,

For example on the new tesco current account you need to pay in £750 a month to avoid fees. Does this £750 have to stay in the account or can you transfer it in one day and out the next and still meet the requirements?

colsten

In, and immediately out is fine. Or out, and immediately in again, is also fine.

Ryan_f_3

Perfect! Thank you!