Advice on current accounts

John1692

Was just hoping for a bit of advice on some banking as I haven't got the wisest head when it comes to these matters. My situation is I'm 22, I have about £3500 savings,i save about £700 a month,I need to switch as I am on a basic TSB current account and my money is not doing anything for me.

Looked at Santander 123 account, after doing cash back calculator I only get about £84 annually after the £60 (£5 x 12 months) fee for the account. First Direct have the best switching account however it seems they cherry pick customers from what I have read so far on forums. Halifax give you £125 and £5 each month which will give me back £185. Surely Halifax is better?

Am I missing anything? Something I should be aware of? I have a appointment to open my Santander tomorrow at 12.30,wondering whether I should cancel it.

Any help will be much appreciated

Thanks

msallen

You start off talking about wanting your savings to work for you - in that case then you can get 5% interest with TSB (up to £2K).

However you then seem to forget all about interest when looking at Santander (which will pay 3% between £3-20K) and only include the cashback in your calculation.

Finally you appear to settle on Halifax which will pay you no interest whatsover, but gives you £5 a month plus a switching bonus.

You need to consider all the separate elements. You will probably conclude that (for now at least) its better to open a Plus account with TSB and transfer £2K into that, then switch you existing account to Halifax.

You'll have to set up a pair of SOs to move £500 from Halifax to TSB Plus and back again every month.

After all that is sorted I would look at getting a Tesco account for the balance of your savings at 3%.

colsten

msallen wrote: »

You start off talking about wanting your savings to work for you - in that case then you can get 5% interest with TSB (up to £2K).

And 5% in a Monthly Saver into which you can pay £250 a month.

The remaining £450 monthly savings could perhaps be spread between a 6% M&S Regular Saver and the 6% FD one (assuming FD accept you).

Get away from the concept of having to have all your money with one single bank. Keep your money in interest paying current accounts and monthly savers.

There are now many better ones than Santander - for example, you could have a couple of Tesco current accounts, taking 2 x £3K and costing no monthly fee.

Why did you want the Santander?

jonesMUFCforever

OP must have a basic account for a reason - so an upgrade might not be available to him at TSB.
If he gets rejected by any other bank then he should check his credit files to see if anything bad is on there.