More than one current account

burgoyne93

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

Are you looking to address this? Or are you happy to chase 1.4% AER, which is less than 1/2 what you could get elsewhere?

I'm happy to address this but just making sure people know I don't really know much about banking before anything gets too complex! If I'm honest I don't really want to see money flying in and out of multiple bank accounts each month though. I'm looking at the Santander 123 account at the moment as it seems to be the best for the money I'll be putting into it (£500 p/m going in and 3% on balances up to 20k). Does that mean it be fine to standing order £500 a month from my club lloyds account to santander then standing order it straight back to satisfy the £500pm requirement?

YorkshireBoy

burgoyne93 wrote: »

Does that mean it be fine to standing order £500 a month from my club lloyds account to santander then standing order it straight back to satisfy the £500pm requirement?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Unlike your Lloyds account, Santander works on statement months not calendar months. So be sure to set your SOs up for a date well away from your Santander statement date (which is based on the date you opened the account).

burgoyne93

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Unlike your Lloyds account, Santander works on statement months not calendar months. So be sure to set your SOs up for a date well away from your Santander statement date (which is based on the date you opened the account).

Ah okay, looks like Santander is the way to go. After posting I realised I could transfer the £500 in a month then use that Santander account to pay rent which will take up a good portion of that 500 then, to avoid having to send it back to lloyds. So if my rent was to be paid on the 1st of each month I would need to set up the account towards the end of the month?

jennifernil

You also need to have 2 DDs paid from Santander every month, preferably ones that will earn cashback as there is a £2 per month account fee.

If you don't want to do this, you can have £15k spread over 3 x BOS Vantage accounts with no DDs needed, and move money between accounts to satisfy the funding.

edit: the DDs need to be set up though not necessarily paid out every month. If you want the cashback though, then it will have to be ones that pay out and qualify.

burgoyne93

jennifernil wrote: »

You also need to have 2 DDs paid from Santander every month, preferably ones that will earn cashback as there is a £2 per month account fee.

If you don't want to do this, you can have £15k spread over 3 x BOS Vantage accounts with no DDs needed, and move money between accounts to satisfy the funding.

Damn, I don't think I'd be able to think of two more DD's to come out of another current account but don't want to be dealing with 4 current accounts either!

jennifernil

You can open 2 Tesco savings accounts (one of each type) and set up DDs to pull money from Santander or Lloyds etc into the Tesco accounts to satisfy the DD requirements.

3 BOS Vantages are no more difficult to manage than one. You have internet banking, it only takes a few minutes to move the required £1000 round the accounts and skim off excess interest if necessary.

If you pay gas, electricity, water, telephone, council tax via Santander, you get Cashback which may well offset the £2 fee.

There is very little involved in running multiple accounts when they are mainly used to earn interest. I only spend about 15 minutes per month managing our 17 accounts.

burgoyne93

jennifernil wrote: »

You can open 2 Tesco savings accounts (one of each type) and set up DDs to pull money from Santander or Lloyds etc into the Tesco accounts to satisfy the DD requirements.

3 BOS Vantages are no more difficult to manage than one. You have internet banking, it only takes a few minutes to move the required £1000 round the accounts and skim off excess interest if necessary.

If you pay gas, electricity, water, telephone, council tax via Santander, you get Cashback which may well offset the £2 fee.

There is very little involved in running multiple accounts when they are mainly used to earn interest. I only spend about 15 minutes per month managing our 17 accounts.

What is the minimum amount I can set up a DD to Tesco accounts for? As ideally I don't want any money to be held in there. Although I guess I could send it straight back to Santander via standing order. I wasn't planning on using the account to pay bills from but it might be worth looking into if the cashback is worthwhile.

Just quickly checked the BOS Vantage account and this line rules out that account for my salary "Pay into your account at least £1,000 each calendar month", especially if I were to have more than one of them!

jennifernil

With BOS, you don't have to pay in salary, or even new money. You do however have to have a good enough record to get the accounts as they are current accounts.

Depending on how much you have to save, you open the required accounts and just switch £1000 between them.

For example, if you have £3-5k to save, open 2 accounts. Put at least £1 in one account and at least £3k in the other. Then around the 3rd of the month you use your internet banking to move the required £1000 from one account to the other and back again.

Check the interest rates for the various balance bands to make sure your split is sensible.

If you have £6-10k you split it between the accounts so that each has at least £3k.

If you have £10-15k you will need 3 accounts.

Be sure to move any interest that takes an account over £5k.

If you are not paying bills by DD to earn cashback, then Santander is not so good for under £15k as you have the £2 account fee each month.

I pay my Council Tax and Utilities from Santander for the cashback and send £500 there by SO from my main account each month. This gets me about £4 per month cashback. You will need a minimum balance of £3k to get the 3% interest rate. Anything unused just adds to the balance.

Having had a bad experience with Halifax Reward and DDs, I think it a good plan to have a 3rd DD (Tesco) set up in case there is a problem with one of the other DDs The Tesco savers can support multiple linked accounts.

For the Tesco accounts, I do £2 DDs, then just fetch it back manually every month or two, depending on how fast it mounts up.

ceredigion

jennifernil wrote: »

You also need to have 2 DDs paid from Santander every month, preferably ones that will earn cashback as there is a £2 per month account fee.
.

All together now


OH NO YOU DON'T
:j:j:j

YorkshireBoy

jennifernil wrote: »

For the Tesco accounts, I do £2 DDs, then just fetch it back manually every month or two, depending on how fast it mounts up.

I use Tesco current accounts to mop up the Tesco savings account balances each month, ie I log in to make sure all DDs have arrived and everything's OK, and then move the savings account balances (bar £1 in each) to the current accounts.


Of course this is only beneficial if you leave some headroom in the current accounts, which I do with most of my accounts...just to save on a little admin!


PS, twice on this thread you've made mention of DDs having to pay out from Santander. Unless you know something the rest of us don't yet (including the Santander website), you might want to edit your posts to avoid any confusion for newbies?