Bank accounts for savings...please bear with me!

wallyUK

I am trying to sort out savings by using high interest current accounts. This is my plan:

Currently I have 7K earning nothing in a co-op savings account and 10k earning next to nothing in a Barclays ISA (now even closer to nothing due to rate drop!). I have opened a Club Lloyds account and am about to move 5K to this and set up DDs and so on. Husband not fully au fait with MSE ways and doesn't like my plan to bounce funds between our normal current account and the LLoyds to fulfil the funding criteria.

I was therefore thinking of opening a Santander 123 account and putting the ISA money plus remaining 2K in there. Then cross funding the Lloyds and Santander to meet the funding requirements. Thus leaving hubby and our joint current acc out of the loop .

We are saving for his extensive dental treatment and he has applied for a Tesco CC (19months 0% spending) to pay for the treatment while we continue to save. I hope we can save about £800 a month. Would this be best placed in 2X Lloyds regular savers (is this possible) or just into the Santander account?

Thank you for your thoughts! :T

trailingspouse

We have all of our money spread between Club Lloyds (one for me, one for him, both maxed out), and a joint Santander a/c (which we use as our main current account), and we bounce funds around accordingly - so I would totally agree with your choices there.

BUT - you need to re-educate your OH. It seems a shame that he (and you as a couple) are missing out on the interest. If all else fails, get him to call the banks and confirm that it's OK to do this. They really don't care where the money comes from, and once it's in your account you can choose to do whatever you want with it - so if you choose to pay it in and then pay it out again, that's your prerogative. You know that, we all know that, all you have to do is convince him!!

wallyUK

I think OH believes that it is possible but doesn't like that it is 'messy' and will make our budget spreadsheet difficult to reconcile...or something like that.

Archi_Bald

wallyUK wrote: »

Thus leaving hubby and our joint current acc out of the loop .

sounds a good plan, until he sees that it's working perfectly - which, of course, it will as it does so for many of us here . Keeping the "savings" accounts separate from your existing current accounts is a pretty good idea, though. You already have enough in savings to be able to do that.

wallyUK wrote: »

Would this be best placed in 2X Lloyds regular savers (is this possible) or just into the Santander account?

You need 2 Club Lloyds current accounts (i.e. one each) to be eligible for 2 of their Reg Savers as you are only allowed one per person.

Don't you fancy TSB Plus accounts? You can have 2 each, and 2 joint ones, so space for £12,000. They pay you more than Club Lloyds and you don't have any withdrawal restrictions (as you would have on the Reg Savers).

Monthly funding for TSB can be internal, so just bounce £500 between the TSB accounts. Only other thing to remember is that you must set correspondence and statements to online only.

Also, the Halifax Reward could pay you £180 a year, as you can have one each and one joint. May be this is one to add when you have sorted out the simpler ones.

wallyUK

Archi_Bald wrote: »

Don't you fancy TSB Plus accounts? You can have 2 each, and 2 joint ones, so space for £12,000

I did consider this...and it could be useful for our monthly savings. Hmmm....how to tell OH that I have opened another 6 current accounts :eek:

grumbler

wallyUK wrote: »

We are saving for his extensive dental treatment and he has applied for a Tesco CC (19months 0% spending) to pay for the treatment while we continue to save. I hope we can save about £800 a month. Would this be best placed in 2X Lloyds regular savers (is this possible) or just into the Santander account?

Unless I have missed something, why not use 2x First Direct regular savers paying 6% on 2x£300 monthly deposits. After 12 months swipe ~2x£3600+£220 into Santander or similar.

colsten

grumbler wrote: »

Unless I have missed something, why not use 2x First Direct regular savers paying 6% on 2x£300 monthly deposits.

You may have missed that they want to save £800 a month, for starters. Secondly, Santander 123 doesn't pay the best interest, it is just perhaps a little bit more convenient due to the higher limit.

Archi_Bald

Also, they already have £17K, so that 123 account would be full very quickly. Mind you, they could open 2 more if hubby plays ball...

Archi_Bald

wallyUK wrote: »

I did consider this...and it could be useful for our monthly savings. Hmmm....how to tell OH that I have opened another 6 current accounts :eek:

You would need his agreement to 4 of the 6.....may be do some numbers and show him how much more interest you would be getting if he did agree?

wallyUK

Yes, because we potentially have £800 pcm to save I wasn't looking at first direct.

I have made my OH sounds like a big meanie, he isn't - he will probably go along with what I suggest but just thinks I'm a bit nuts.

I know the Santander account is at a lower rate of interest but it will hold a fair bit and I can move some direct debits there for the cash back. Ideally, I would like to be as efficient as possible in terms of numbers of accounts that we have. I am an american citizen and due to new rules I have to report every account I have if I hold an aggregate value of $10,000 or more. So having 10 accounts would be a real PITA!