Newbie: advice required

psychic_teabag

FunLovinCriminal wrote: »

Santander is paying £12 per interest, that's the interest and the cashback on the council tax, Sky tv, and mobile phone payments (123 account).

With a £6000 balance, you should be getting £12 per month in just interest, net of basic-rate tax. So the cashback should be additional to that ..?

Can you move fuel and D/D to that account to earn additional cashback ? If you don't get enough cashback to cover the (increased) monthly fee, you may as well close the 123 account. (Especially if the D/D would be useful elsewhere to cover the D/D requirements that some accounts have. I forgot to mention that Club Lloyds requires two active monthly D/D.)

FunLovinCriminal

Apologies, just checked with my app - currently getting just under £20 per month with cashback and interest. I have my gas and electric with the 123 account too, and the mortgage (although no cashback with that).
Will look at new mortgages with Santander with their cashback when my current deal expires Feb 2017.
My wife has very little interest in money, so I will need to do all the forms etc on her behalf. We have an 18 month old at the moment that keeps us very very busy!
It's all about trying to save where we can and have the money we have working as hard as we can.
Unfortunately Virgin money do not have an app, so I need to log on th tablet when get a chance (hahahahaha!) to move all the ISA money to the Santander account.
Is like to use some of the saved cash against the mortgage, but with maternity pay required soon, we will need access to it at some point

BE95

psychic_teabag wrote: »

With a £6000 balance, you should be getting £12 per month in just interest, net of basic-rate tax. So the cashback should be additional to that ..?

Can you move fuel and D/D to that account to earn additional cashback ? If you don't get enough cashback to cover the (increased) monthly fee, you may as well close the 123 account. (Especially if the D/D would be useful elsewhere to cover the D/D requirements that some accounts have. I forgot to mention that Club Lloyds requires two active monthly D/D.)

This could include the fee?

FunLovinCriminal

No, not including few - just under £20 interest and cash back. Then currently £2 fee off that

enthusiasticsaver

It is the cashback on the Santander you want to look at rather than the interest. 3% is good but the increased fee from January makes it less attractive in my eyes. I have 2 but they are both fully funded (£20k each so it is worth it to me to get 3% on £40k but the fee from January will be covered on one of the accounts but not the other.


I would look at filling TSB and Nationwide accounts first at 5% and then LLoyds at 4%. You can have one each or you could have a joint and one sole one although I empathise when you say your wife has no interest in money - my OH is the same and it is such a hassle to get him to open accounts I have given up and he is just on our joint Santander 123 account and all the others are in my name. Most isa rates are rubbish so I only do stocks and shares ones now.

FunLovinCriminal

Both the TSB and Nationwide are both full. I think the nationwide is only for 1 year at 5%, not sure when it drops, or how long I've got left.
I like the 123 account, was thinking about getting the credit card - Coz we work in a supermarket the cashback would be good, but the fee puts me off. Plus we have our employee's credit card and use it to get as many loyalty points as we can.
Thanks for everyone's advice, sounds like closing the isa and putting into new TSB account is the way forward.
Wish it could be more simple!

Archi_Bald

FunLovinCriminal wrote: »

Both the TSB and Nationwide are both full.

Sounds as if you have just 1 TSB and 1 FlexDirect? Why not 3 of each? For any remaining money, use Tesco current accounts - 4 between the two of you will accommodate £12,000. Fill up the 5% TSB and Nationwide Monthly/Regular Savers as best as you can. That should pay way more than any Santander account, even if you could get a lot of cashback.

BTW, I recall that cashback on the 123 CC will be limited from January onwards, so this also looks a bit like a damp squib if you already have a loyalty discount/cashback card.

Eco_Miser

eskbanker wrote: »

£8.5K earns a basic rate taxpayer £204 and a higher rate taxpayer £153 in net interest.
... but on what basis is a breakeven figure being mentioned, i.e. breaking even against what?

Apparently against having £8.5k in a single Lloyds Club (which only earns interest on the first £5k)

Martin wrote:

For basic rate taxpayers, Santander is a clear winner once you have £10,000 in it, even after the fee. In fact, the cut-off point is £8,550 compared to the bank account paying high interest on the next largest amount

link

eskbanker

Eco_Miser wrote: »

Apparently against having £8.5k in a single Lloyds Club (which only earns interest on the first £5k)

link

Thanks - since that's predicated on a massive assumption that only one account is being opened then yes, I can see that a 123 outperforms a single Club Lloyds (or a single account of any flavour) at a certain point beyond the cap of the smaller account, but obviously most on here would recommend multiple accounts to aggregate interest so that blog entry is pretty arbitrary. Anyway, not looking to shoot the messenger, thanks for finding that!

PawelK

I spotted that link few days ago in one of the posts but cant find it now. While I continue to search, perhaps someone will be quicker? It was a basic website where you can put hiw much money you have to invest and if you can fix or need instant access and it was giving you a split of the best rates for current accounts or regular savers with capped amounts but also, what is really good, whether each account requires direct debits.