Muppet Money

elwy

jimjames wrote: »

Hopefully this site has changed your mind.

Rates are not low across the board. You can get 0.5% or 5%. That's 10x the amount of interest.

That would definitely be worthwhile but the highest rate I could find that suited my situation was 1.5% for easy access savings when I currently get 1%. I could get maybe 2% if I locked money away but there was a lot of optimism that interest rates might rise at the time so I didn't think that locking away was a good option.
My interest rates are now dropping further to 0.5% so that 1.5% rate is looking more attractive. Even so, I'm wondering how dangerous it would be to move most of my cash assets into S&S instead, at least until interest rates improve.

noggin1980

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Just for silly stats: Microsoft made $22bn of profits last year (87bn of revenue). So that's $700 per second, of revenue, 24/7/365.

If you were Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer with about 4% ownership, you're on about $25 a second. If either of them saw a $100 bill there's no point bending over to pick it up as they've already earned more than $100 in the five seconds it would take.

Of course one would expect they would pick it up because you don't make money by ignoring opportunities.

There are probably better examples but the Gates one has been going around for decades (he used to own rather more of the company that he does now, I think he's on track to have zero shares within the next 4 or 5 years).

Bill Gates has said he would pick it up in the past.

amusingly say the average networth on this board is £200k and we'd always bend down to pick up 20p, only pick up 10p some of time meaning 15p is our trigger number to bend down and pick up a coin as someone with a job and a home and a networth of £200k. So We'd bend over to improve our networth by 0.000075%

If you scale that up to Bill Gates Wealth with a net worth of £53.6B the value of money that he would bend over for with the same plan as us is £40,200

colsten

gadgetmind wrote: »

Summary: "Company that makes money out of investments says that people should be investing more money."

True, and you would expect them to do so.
Them trying to drum up business does, however, not change the fact that billions of british savers' money is languishing in accounts that pay next to no interest.

I think it is rather credible that banks and building societies don't have a high opinion of the account holders involved.

mgdavid

bowlhead99 wrote: »

..... If either of them saw a $100 bill there's no point bending over to pick it up as they've already earned more than $100 in the five seconds it would take...........

yes but the wider picture is that (a) the $100 is completely theirs, tax-free, and (b) it saves them stopping by an ATM .
What's not to like?

LHW99

colsten wrote: »

True, and you would expect them to do so.
Them trying to drum up business does, however, not change the fact that billions of british savers' money is languishing in accounts that pay next to no interest.

I think it is rather credible that banks and building societies don't have a high opinion of the account holders involved.

Unfortunately it sometimes seems like banks and building societies don't have a teriffically high opinion of any of their account holders.

Spidernick

Bill Gates wound probably then drop the $100 into a charity box - he seems that sort of person.

colsten

LHW99 wrote: »

Unfortunately it sometimes seems like banks and building societies don't have a teriffically high opinion of any of their account holders.

Which - as the article actually mentions - makes it even more astonishing that as a community of savers, we forego over £10billion a year in income.

colsten

Spidernick wrote: »

Bill Gates wound probably then drop the $100 into a charity box - he seems that sort of person.

If he had charged a bit less for his products, we wouldn't need to feel the need to elevate himself and his wife to near sainthood by supporting all those charities.

jimjames

LHW99 wrote: »

Unfortunately it sometimes seems like banks and building societies don't have a teriffically high opinion of any of their account holders.

I very my doubt their opinion of me is very high at all - I take that as an achievement.

I pay nothing for my banking and make a very tidy sum from moving money around between accounts.

For all those who complain about the bank's behaviour, who's the one having more impact - the account holder happily getting 0.25% leaving the money sitting there or the one getting a decent return playing them at their game?

enthusiasticsaver

I think when people believe there is only a small difference in interest rates between banks it does not amount to very much. If you explain to someone that leaving £10000 in a 0.05% paying account (yes they do exist) will give them £5 interest per year but putting it into a 3% current account gives £300 that is a tangible difference.


It all comes down to apathy and people unwilling to spend time researching. Same people who don't shop around every year for car or home insurance or just stick with the same fuel company without comparing each year.