Opening new current accounts in retirement

societys_child

made an appointment to take him into TSB to get his first sole account with them (and a joint one for us as well)

Why not also get one for yourself as well while your there? Three is better than two

Can't you do it on-line any-more?

youngretired

Hi CJ

My husband has been retired for 5 years now and he hasn't had any problems opening all of the good interest current accounts. Also my mum and dad have both retired and we (daughters) have been opening the same current accounts for them as well with no problems.

I understand how it can be frustrating for people to understand where to put their money to get the best from it and all the details that are required i.e. monthly funding, direct debits (hence we have the same problem as you with our dad) but once they are opened it's easy.

If your husband has such a large amount to put away then even though you pay £5 a month for Santander 123 the interest you would get back a month still is worth it even without the DDR cashback as if you keep the £20000 in the month you would get average of £48.65 non tax monthly interest so still see £43.65 (unless you have to pay any tax). Also the good thing with Santander is that the DDR's do not have to be monthly.

SevenOfNine

No problem. Since retiring fully he's opened accounts with TSB, BoS (2), Santander 123 (& 2 Tesco savings a/c for the DD facility). For paying in requirements he's paired them up & uses a 'crossover' method...........

........or should I say, I'VE set it all of it up for him on line! He's never been interested in the banking/savings/interest part of his/our finances.

Gers

I retired early 18 months ago and since then have opened numerous current accounts, in fact just got accepted by first direct last week. I've only been rejected by HSBC but got accepted by M&S.

I spend about an hour a month moving money around and then a few more minutes later with Santander and Tesco because of their different monthly cycles.

Encourage your OH to be bold and try new things. For years I believed that only one current account could be held at a time, how things have changed.

xylophone

he threatened to throw his laptop out of the window,

I've just booked a day off work for Friday, and made an appointment to take him into TSB to get his first sole account with them

Encourage your OH to be bold and try new things

Mashed broccoli and carrots anyone and an airing in the nice, new pram?:)

colsten

C_J wrote: »

Will he find it far more difficult to be accepted for new current accounts if he is retired? Or do banks not mind about that?

From my experience, being retired is not an inhibitor to getting new current accounts. Acceptance mainly depends on the state of your credit files.

No_6

Same as 7o9, I open all my / hers / and joint accounts online with no probs and we are both retired, also rotating credit cards with good limits too.

C_J

Thank you everyone for your advice, it is very much appreciated and I am now much more hopeful that I'll be able to help him maximise this retirement income. Both of us have an immaculate credit history so that won't be a stumbling block.

I keep a spreadsheet of all my accounts with their various DDs and can see exactly where I am financially on any given day of the month. I'm proud of the way I budget, save and run our household (I have learned so very much from these forums - two years ago I would never have thought to have more than one bank account, and assumed everyone just stayed loyal to the one they opened as a teenager ...... how naive was that?!).

My OH is just way out of his comfort zone here. I suppose not everyone finds this stuff natural or easy to do. It took me a while to become financially savvy (and I had the help and support of many posters here to guide me along the journey), but I will get him there eventually too, I hope Thanks again.

SevenOfNine

CJ, I started off 'small' & was definitely slow to join the party! I got a lot of help from (& just reading) this forum & took baby steps, adding accounts one at a time, even dabbled a bit in the 'switch' thing as well.

Had to set up a spreadsheet & structure chart now. Just dropped from 18 to 16 bank accounts, 4 monthly savers, 11 savings accounts & 3 ISAs........& that barely scratches the surface of what a lot of the other posters are running.

I look back a couple of years to when we only had TWO bank accounts, 1 for day to day costs & 1 for bills!!!

I keep an eye on this forum because the others always share this & that, like drawing attention to the need for 2 DDs with BoS from Sept, very helpful as it's meant I could get it sorted now in my own time.

zolablue25

We were also very late to the party thinking "its way too much effort" but at the beginning of the year I decided to give it a go by poening a Santander 123 account. We opted for thisone first because of the fact you could stick £20k in there and if it did turn out to be a faff I'd rather have £20k earning 3% than £2k earning 5%. As it actually turned out it was very easy to do so we moved on.

We now have 1 x Santander (joint with 2x Associated RS accounts), 2 x TSB (with their RS accounts), 1x M&S (switch for the £220 card and the 6% RS), 1 x Nationwide Flex (RS account), 1 x Tesco, 1 x Leeds RS plus our original Barclays account that has our offset mortgage attached.

I've told Mrs Zolablue25 to open another Tesco account but, thinking about it, I guess we would be better opening a joint TSB account first.

2 weeks ago we had my 80 year old mother come to stay. Whilst we were driving her back to her house we started talking about money and she said she wanted to switch her account. She also said that she had a chunk of cash in an ISA that pays 0.5%!!! I told her to go into town and open a 123 account and get 20k of that chunk straight in there. I know she could get more by opening lots of other accounts but, having had her current account hacked twice, she no longer does online banking (in fact, she won't use her computer at all anymore) so I figured Santander was the best option for minimum hasstle. She had an appointment to see an advisor at the bank on Monday, I must ring her and find out how she got on.