Rotating cash through accounts

zolablue25

I am about to start setting up automatic payments to move cash through various current accounts to maintain their interest payments. If I set up to transfer money on, say, the first of every month does it matter if the 1st falls on a non-banking day (e.g a Sunday or Bank Holiday)?. To make it clear I intend for the money to go from my first account to my second on the 1st and from my second account to the third also on the 1st etc.

molerat

As long as you have enough money in the accounts to fund the transfer - a receiving account can afford to transfer out before it receives the transfer in - then you will be fine. Some banks will, at least partly, operate on a non working day and some won't do anything until the working day. Also remember some banks do not use the calendar month as the account month.

SnowTiger

zolablue25 wrote: »

I am about to start setting up automatic payments to move cash through various current accounts to maintain their interest payments. If I set up to transfer money on, say, the first of every month does it matter if the 1st falls on a non-banking day (e.g a Sunday or Bank Holiday)?. To make it clear I intend for the money to go from my first account to my second on the 1st and from my second account to the third also on the 1st etc.

That's a bit dangerous, unless the middle account has sufficient funds in it to pay to the third account without receiving funds from the first account.

Banks do automatic transfers at various times through the early morning.

A->B->C.

B->C might happen before A->B.

Faster Payments should reach accounts by the next working day. Weekends and holidays, such as New Year's Day, aren't working days. While most transfers happen almost instantaneously, some banks are a little sluggish.

I do my transfers manually.

Ballard

I prefer to make mine manually.

If you feel that there might be an issue with balances then perhaps it might be better for you to break the amounts up and transfer a third of the amount between them every Wednesday (so as to avoid the majority of bank holidays).

zolablue25

Thanks for your responses. I definitely don't want to do all of this manually so will set it up for "fire and forget".

I have noticed elsewhere in these forums that many people do transfer in and out on the same day so just wondered whether there are any issues with that - and it appears there are. To be fair though, I think most of the accounts would have enough balance to cover it and those that don't I might leave a couple of days between the in and out.

Dobbibill

be careful having it set up for the 1st of the month as the billing period for some accounts ends on the 1st working day of the month so if there is a delay and it doesn't arrive until the next working day, you will then be in the next billing period and will have missed the deadline for the previous month/billing period.

To be sure I would set it up for the middle of the month.

HTH

SnowTiger

zolablue25 wrote: »

Thanks for your responses. I definitely don't want to do all of this manually so will set it up for "fire and forget".

I have noticed elsewhere in these forums that many people do transfer in and out on the same day so just wondered whether there are any issues with that - and it appears there are. To be fair though, I think most of the accounts would have enough balance to cover it and those that don't I might leave a couple of days between the in and out.

You could transfer smaller amounts if you think the balances might not cover the transfers. Perhaps instead of transferring, say, £1,000 every month you could do two transfers of £500 each.

You should be logging in to your accounts and checking them at least once a month. You could use that as an opportunity to do manual transfers. It's a few clicks and takes seconds.

ratechaser

Another vote for manual here. Faster payments show up almost instantly in the receiving bank (with the exception of the Coop, which is a PITA and not an account I will be keeping long term!) so it's really only 15 minutes work per month for me, and I'm cycling through over 10 accounts right now!

zolablue25

Thanks for your replies, but I really don't want to be doing this manually as Iknow I will forget.

Its a good point regarding the first of the month but I would like to get it done before the middle of the month as the money is only earning 1.25% while its stting in my offset mortgage account so I'll probably move it to the 5th to start the ball rolling.

I know my Santander account works on a monthly basis from the date the account was opened (23rd in my case) but the 5th will fit in there nicely. The Nationwide & TSB are calender months and the M&S RS account is a month fom set up and I'm waiting until whatever day I decide to move money around before opening that account.

qsk

adindas wrote: »

To avoid this, you will need to leave at least four days slag between transfering ina nd out or do it manually via Faster Payment Out (FPO).

Why 4 days?

I have a similar setup but only leave 3 days in between (ie, 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th). Halifax is one of them. The worst case happens on bank holidays, but (all ?) banks now offer 2nd chance SO in the afternoon, and that sort outs the problem on the bank holiday. Problem would happen if there are two bank holidays in two consecutive three day intervals. In this case, three SO rotation payments might happen on the same day. But we do not have such luxury here, do we?

qsk

Dobbibill wrote: »

be careful having it set up for the 1st of the month as the billing period for some accounts ends on the 1st working day of the month so if there is a delay and it doesn't arrive until the next working day, you will then be in the next billing period and will have missed the deadline for the previous month/billing period.

To be sure I would set it up for the middle of the month.

HTH

I understand what you mean but cannot see the difference between the first day and a day in the middle of the month, as the billing period could fall on a middle day of month as well.