Advice - shuffling money round accounts

Anagran

Hi,

We are looking for a bit of advice, we have opened several current accounts over the past year to try and maximize interest on my savings. We are finding it more difficult to keep track of the accounts and ensure the minimum deposits are met each month (manually transferring money). I think we need a better system as I have already missed interest due to not meeting the criteria. I was looking for ideas on the simplest way to do it. Between me and my partner we have -

4 x TSB accounts
2 x Club Lloyds
2 x BOS reward
1 x Tesco CA
1 x Halifax reward
1 x Santander 123

I have just set up SO's going back and forth between the two pairs of TSB accounts for £500, so hopefully that is them sorted, but other than that it is chaos.

Thanks for any help

Anagran

InsideInsurance

Why not just set up a standing order between all of them so the money flows from TSB1 right through to Santander and then back to TSB1? Do it for the highest minimum transaction of all the accounts and then you dont have to mess about remembering if its £500 or £750 or £1,000 for each one.

May take an hour to set them all up but once its done thats it

YorkshireBoy

From memory, I don't think Club Lloyds requires 'new' money, so there's a couple of cross-funding SOs you could use there.

Standing orders won't work as well with your Reward accounts, since presumably they're run with zero or close to zero balances?...meaning you'd have to introduce some delays and lose some interest each and every month.

So, you're looking at manual transfers for BoS, Halifax, Tesco*, & Santander. Unless one or more of these receive your incomes?

I'd assign one day a month to make all my manual transfers. This could be payday, or perhaps since a great many of them pay their respective interest/Rewards on the second working day of the month, make them on the 3rd of the month.

Watch out for Santander though, because they don't run with calendar months.

On an admin point, I run all my finances on Microsoft Money...maybe something like that would help you?

And finally, a potential issue with SOs is forgetting to cancel them upon withdrawing funds for a big ticket purchase. So be careful with that.


* If Tesco is full (ie with £3K), then maybe open another and split the cash £1.5K in each. You could then set up a couple of cross-firing SOs meaning there's one less manual transfer required.

Archi_Bald

Depends how much money you have in each of the accounts. If, for instance, you have enough in the 123 to cover all the minimum amounts needed, and more than the minimum amount in each of the other accounts, you could just set up SOs that swap the minimum amounts between the 123 and the other accounts on the same day each month (say around the 6th or so). That's what I do.

Caution about:

• Tesco - they proocess SOs at weekends. No other bank seems to do that
• accounts which do not have at least the min monthly amount in them (such as may be your Halifax). Might still be best to do these manually

Archi_Bald

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

From memory, I don't think Club Lloyds requires 'new' money, so there's a couple of cross-funding SOs you could use there.

Club Lloyds monthly doesn't need to come from a non-Lloyds account, so x-funding between the 2 Club Lloyds is possible.

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

Watch out for Santander though, because they don't run with calendar months.

Same for Tesco

YorkshireBoy

Archi_Bald wrote: »

Same for Tesco

I'd read they paid interest on a statement month (or the 'monthiversary' as it has been termed on here), but did I miss the statement month funding requirement when I read the T&Cs?

Don't have these accounts yet, so must read the T&Cs again before I open* them.


* Hanging fire for the moment, hoping for a personal invite with gift card/clubcard points.

Fruit_and_Nut_Case

I actually prefer to do mine manually. It only takes half an hour per month and it means that I can scoop up the excess (credited interest) and dump it in the Santander 123 at the end of the run.

Archi_Bald

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

I'd read they paid interest on a statement month (or the 'monthiversary' as it has been termed on here), but did I miss the statement month funding requirement when I read the T&Cs?

You are right, Tesco pays interest regardless of monthly deposits. But they hit you with a £5 charge if you miss a deposit in any statement month. So it's for that reason you need to be on the ball.

The Tesco TC's are not clear on this but their practice is....

bouicca21

I'm a bit confused about statement month and calendar month. Do I assume that calendar month allows transfers on any day within a calendar month, but to stay within a statement month I would need to set up my transfers to happen on the same day e.g. The 2nd of each calendar month? Even if my statement month started say on the 13th, keeping to the same day would mean my transfers were always within the statement month?

B_G_B

bouicca21 wrote: »

Even if my statement month started say on the 13th, keeping to the same day would mean my transfers were always within the statement month?

Correct. Providing that your payment is away from your statement date (to be ultra safe). If they are too close, potentially a weekend or bank holiday around statement / funding date could louse it up.

Statement month for my Santander account runs from 20th to the 19th, so for example it would be no good transferring funds on 25th July, then on 10th August thinking that two months are covered as both payments would fall into the same statement month.

Personally I prefer to do it manually. I have a spreadsheet with all accounts and the important parts of the requirements next to each one i.e. whether external funding required, how much funding, DDs etc. Then once a month I use this as a tick sheet to make sure requirements are met. I also use varying small DDs into Tesco savers rather than the “standard” £1. This makes it very easy to see, at a glance when and which DDs have gone out.

Zola.

Isn't it bad for your credit rating if you have loads of open bank accounts?