Regular Savings or High Interest Current Account?

isingh1

Hi all,

Firstly apologies if this has been asked in the past.

I have around £5k that I can plug into either a Regular Savings account and/or a high interest current account and wanted to know the best thing to do.

I've just got a matured First direct regular savings account thats just finished. So that's around £3.6k + I have an additional 2k in my normal current account that can be used aswell.

I can't do any joint accounts as its just me.

I've got TSB accounts, Santander, Lloyds, 2x BoS, Clydesdale (Only for the switching bonus! from a 5% nationwide).

So looking at it, the options I was thinking off were:

1) First Direct - Regular Savings, can you open one again?
2) HSBC - Regular Savings account.
3) Another BoS account, as I believe you can have 3x accounts pp

so I was thinking to either plug all the £5k into a BoS account.

or put £3.6k into another regular savers, while putting the £2k to start with a BoS account and fill it up within a couple of months?

Or another idea I had was to plug the 5k into BoS, then open a TSB account in my relative's name that lives next door?

Should I also close the existing first direct account I have, as this was only used for the regular savings?

The real question I had was, are these regular savings accounts worth it? I know you can't touch the money for a year. But in the end is it worth having?

If you guys have any other suggestions, feel free to let me know.

I'd appreciate the help.

Thanks

Eco_Miser

You can't put £5000, or even £3600, straight into regular savers.
You can open another FD Regular saver.
So put the £5k in the highest paying current account you've not got yet (I presume those you've listed except Clydesdale are full ), and open 6% regular savers (and maybe 5% & 4% regular savers) and feed them from the lowest paying accounts and new savings.

Remember the BOS, Lloyds and Santander rates are tiered, so try to be earning their highest rate, or have only a nominal amount in each account.

6% is twice 3%, so you double your interest on what you get into those RSs.
See https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5374614 for how much you can get at each rate.

If you open an account in your relative's name, that could be fraud. Also any money in the account would be theirs, not yours.

colsten

Put the £%K into two Tesco current accounts and then drip feed some regular savings accounts from it for extra interest.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/best-regular-savings-accounts#calculator

AndyPK

you want at least £3k in BOS

Clydesdale will give you 2% on £3K if you opened the right account

colsten

AndyPK wrote: »

you want at least £3k in BOS

Yes, quite. And BoS accounts do not lend themselves very nicely as feeder accounts for Regular Savers because of the tiered interest rates.

CB/YB shouldn't really be part of this discussion as 2% is pretty dreadful.