Do you cycle your £1,000/£1,500 manually or Standing Order?

JustAnotherSaver

Finally getting round to asking this one as it can be a bit of a pain since i do some of it manually & some times it ends up being quite late in the month so i'm getting close to missing out.

For example....

I have accounts with TSB (their 5%) as does my wife & these are maxed out. So a standing order is set up to go:
my account 1>my account 2>wifes account 1>wifes account 2>my account 1.

That's easy.

But then i have accounts that don't give rewards for leaving money in there, such as Halifax & Nationwide FlexAccount.

So those only ever have £1 in it (plus the £1s for meeting direct debit requirements).

So currently i manually send £1000 to my Halifax solo account, cycle it through that, the joint account with my wife, my wifes solo account, our Nationwide FlexAccount & then back to where the £1,000 came from.

Would it be ok to set up a standing order in this case when the Halifax & Nationwide don't actually start with £1,000 to be able to send anywhere? Would i get charged?

Because i could set up £1,0000 to cycle through the lot of them but if Halifax try to send before my main account sends its £1,000 then there wont be enough funds to cover that...??


Would just prefer if it was all automatic (if possible).

Snakey

I was wrestling with this a few weeks ago - trying to work out whether a series of same-day or consecutive-day transfers (123 to M&S to Halifax to 123) was achievable or whether I might run into problems if different banks executed the transfers at different times (so if one paid out before the other paid in) or if they had different rules for what happened when one of the days fell at a weekend or whatever.

Nobody really had an answer for me - whether I'd phrased the question badly or what, I don't know - but the consensus seemed to be "set up a diary reminder to yourself to do all the transfers manually". Not ideal since the DDs pay out on different dates in each account and so that's actually three or four diary reminders (the above cycle is a simplification)...

I ballsed up the M&S one a couple of days ago due to having had a massively busy week at work - I was literally getting home and going to bed, not even going online - so the regular saver SO bounced.

So I'm going to try to set up something automatically even if it does mean losing a few days' interest all over the place by having to leave margins for error. Shame because even "a few days here and there" is going to lose me a tenner a year or something if you're talking about £1,000 at 3%. Small potatoes maybe, but I'd rather not lose it if I don't have to lose it!

The information about how regular payments work between banks must be available somewhere, but I'm stuffed if I can find it! Let me know if you have any luck.

Over62

Better to lose a tenner a year than have the whole thing go pear shaped and lose a lot more.

Ashen

I do by standing order, but not sure on the lowest number of 'safe' days to put between them - probably do too many.

ceredigion

Anything with a balance large enough to cover the out going , I use standing orders and the hub method . Anything with small balances I do manually .
It should be possible to set up standing orders to these smaller accounts on a 4 weekly basis with an in on a Tuesday and an out on Wednesday . You would need to look at a calendar to see when Tuesday and Wednesdays next fall on a bank holiday , but it certainly wont be very often . Beyond that you need 3 working days between transactions if you want to do it monthly to be sure . It is only Tesco`s that are out of line by processing 7 days a week, all the others work on a 5 day week.

Techno

The other thing you need to be careful with, if you have more than one account with the same bank, is that some banks do not consider transfers from one account you have with them to another as a 'payment' so you may need to move it out before you move it back in again.

I use a standing order, saves on the worry!

karlie88

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

For example....

I have accounts with TSB (their 5%) as does my wife & these are maxed out. So a standing order is set up to go:
my account 1>my account 2>wifes account 1>wifes account 2>my account 1.

That's easy.

Presumably those SOs are all done on the same date rather than spaced out individually over the month?

Snakey

Over62 wrote: »

Better to lose a tenner a year than have the whole thing go pear shaped and lose a lot more.

Of course, but I believe there must be an option C (not lose a tenner a year and not have it go pear-shaped) if only I could get the right information, and so I'm a touch dissatisfied at only having options A and B to choose from.

Manual transfers are done right away plus you can log in to the recipient account and make sure it's gone through before you move anything out of it, but - as I discovered within the first couple of months - this is only really an option for those whose lives never get busy.

karlie88

ceredigion wrote: »

It is only Tesco`s that are out of line by processing 7 days a week, all the others work on a 5 day week.

Why would Tesco Bank need SOs/manual payments in or out of the accounts? They scrapped their £5 monthly fee last year.

Yorkshire_Pud

Its possible to have a standing order pay in to an account that itself pays out say the same amount but AFTER the incoming payment. All on the same day.

Whilst this leaves a technical negative balance in a low balance account until the incoming payment is received I believe it doesn't actually mean you go overdrawn.

Its the account balance at a specified time of the day that determines if you go overdrawn or not, say 4pm, different banks vary in this cut off time. So no problem if £500 left at 4am the account was £500 overdrawn until 11am when the incoming payment was received and restored the credit balance.

JustAnotherSaver

karlie88 wrote: »

Presumably those SOs are all done on the same date rather than spaced out individually over the month?

Of course.

The same applies for the 3 Bank of Scotland accounts i have. 1 pays 2, 2 pays 3 & 3 pays back to 1.

I know for banks like Halifax, TSB, Lloyds i can internally transfer & still meet the criteria.
Though banks like Santander & then Nationwide (yes before anyone starts i know it's not a bank ) i know have to come from external sources.

Yorkshire_Pud wrote: »

Its possible to have a standing order pay in to an account that itself pays out say the same amount but AFTER the incoming payment.

Whilst this leaves a technical negative balance in a low balance account until the incoming payment is received I believe it doesn't actually men you go overdrawn.

Its the account balance at a specified time of the day that determines if you go overdrawn or not, say 4pm, different banks vary in this cut off time. So no problem if £500 left at 4am the account was £500 overdrawn until 11am when the incoming payment was received and restored the credit balance.

Is this how you do it?

In some ways i kind of miss the days where i just had 1 bank account. Everything was so simple. I didn't have to do a thing.

Though if i went back to that then i would be 'throwing away' a lot of money per year.

I know my workmates take the piddle out of me. Is it worth it they say. I can't be bothered with all that hassle they say.

Yes but when i log in, transfer 1k from Santander to Halifax, from Halifax to my other Halifax & then back to Santander, that has just enabled me to get £10 from Halifax & about £30-£40 from Santander, so call it the minimum of £40 & it's taken me (let's go excessive... (5 mins to do)

Then i ask them .... how long does it take YOU to earn £40 net?? On my wage it would take me somewhere around half a days work & i've just 'earned' it in less than 5 mins.

What have YOU done in that 5mins? Sat on the sofa watching TV? Browsing your facebook? Played some candy crush or whatever the latest fad is?

I know everyones priorities are different, but 5mins 'work' is hardly an effort.

Just wondered if i could make it even easier.