Savings Account or ISA?

YorkshireBoy

I may have missed the answer to this question, but are you wanting to keep the number of accounts to a minimum?...because with £15K and only several £100 per month added going forward, unless I could adequately cover the Santander 1-2-3 monthly £2 fee with DD cashback, then that would be the last account I'd open.

I'd certainly go with Halifax Reward (purely for the fivers, and switching incentive if that's possible), but would open Nationwide FlexDirect*, TSB, Club Lloyds, Bos x 3, and Tesco x 2 (total £30.5K) before Santander 1-2-3.

You may not wish to go this way though?

Do all accounts discussed require you 'must' deposit every month?

Santander £500
Club Lloyds £1,500
Nationwide £1,000
BoS £1,000
TSB £500
Tesco £750
Halifax £750

All but BoS, Tesco & Nationwide have some additional (minor) hoops to jump through.


* For 12 months only.

Archi_Bald

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

All but Tesco and Nationwide have some additional (minor) hoops to jump through.

TSB (and BOS) just need monthly deposits.

YorkshireBoy

Archi_Bald wrote: »

TSB (and BOS) just need monthly deposits.

TSB's 'hoop' is paperless everything (something that could be missed).

BoS wasn't on my list (but should have been!...I'll add/edit now) because I didn't think it had been discussed in this thread, until I introduced it (:)), but you're right...it's just £1K monthly funding.

DiNZi

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

I may have missed the answer to this question, but are you wanting to keep the number of accounts to a minimum?...because with £15K and only several £100 per month added going forward, unless I could adequately cover the Santander 1-2-3 monthly £2 fee with DD cashback, then that would be the last account I'd open.

I'd certainly go with Halifax Reward (purely for the fivers, and switching incentive if that's possible), but would open Nationwide FlexDirect*, TSB, Club Lloyds, Bos x 3, and Tesco x 2 (total £30.5K) before Santander 1-2-3.

You may not wish to go this way though?Santander £500
Club Lloyds £1,500
Nationwide £1,000
BoS £1,000
TSB £500
Tesco £750
Halifax £750

All but BoS, Tesco & Nationwide have some additional (minor) hoops to jump through.


* For 12 months only.

Santander 123 means I can get 3% interest on £3k-20k, that's a pretty good amount. You don't get any interest in the Halifax Rewards, just the £5 every month.

If your saying to just keep it on the side just for the fivers, I'm going to have a look at the terms again tomorrow.

Archi_Bald

DiNZi wrote: »

Santander 123 means I can get 3% interest on £3k-20k, that's a pretty good amount.

You only get 3% (or more) if you

1. can make the monthly charge back from DD cashback
2. can compound the interest, i.e your balance never goes above £20K

None of the other interest paying current accounts has got an unavoidable monthly charge, which is the reason why some people would open the 123 last.

DiNZi wrote: »

You don't get any interest in the Halifax Rewards, just the £5 every month.

Everyone with £15K cash kicking about should be having a Halifax Reward, in addition to whatever other current account they have.

Archi_Bald

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

TSB's 'hoop' is paperless everything (something that could be missed).

You are so right, I had forgotten about the paperless trap

YorkshireBoy

DiNZi wrote: »

Santander 123 means I can get 3% interest on £3k-20k, that's a pretty good amount.

3 x BoS Vantage gets you the same interest, but you don't have to pay £2 a month. My 3 BoS Vantage accounts sit at £5K each (so £15K, roughly the same as your sum?), and are cross-funded by each other with £1K SOs once per month. It's just like having one 'savings' account really, in that I don't have to do anything (except cream off the interest each month*).


Yes there's some 'set up', but it's minimal.

You don't get any interest in the Halifax Rewards, just the £5 every month.

I hold 4 of them (don't get excited, you won't get that many now!), so I'm aware it doesn't pay interest as such. But since you raise the issue, bearing in mind you'd only keep £1 in there (even less is possible), what's the annual interest rate for a £60 return on £1?

If your saying to just keep it on the side just for the fivers, I'm going to have a look at the terms again tomorrow.

It all depends on how much work you're prepared to put in initially, and how much value you place on your time (which will be 30 seconds a month going forward).


* Having said that, I've just dropped the balances to £4,950...meaning I don't even have to carry out this 'chore' every month, just twice a year. And before anyone says "you need to log in to check for fraudulent transactions etc", all 3 account balances are visible when I log in to my 'main' account with Halifax.

YorkshireBoy

@DiNZi

Just a thought...are you married/in a long term relationship/already financially associated with someone else? If you are, then your options are considerably improved!...in that you should be able to make 5% AER on most of your cash...or almost 5% AER on all of it.

DiNZi

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

@DiNZi

Just a thought...are you married/in a long term relationship/already financially associated with someone else? If you are, then your options are considerably improved!...in that you should be able to make 5% AER on most of your cash...or almost 5% AER on all of it.

A lot of good stuff written above which I'll have a look soon, watching the Footie that I missed now.

I'm 22, employed fulltime, not in a relationship yet unfortunately lol!

missile

DiNZi wrote: »

......, not in a relationship yet unfortunately lol!

That explains why you have K15K spare cash <LOL>