anyone a whizz at working out the interest?

virgin_moneysaver

My childrens bonds are maturing this month so I thought I'd put them on a regular saver for a year as the one son will probably need the funds for the car insurance (have you seen the quotes for 17yr olds?!) - the problem I have is that they only allow you to drip feed the funds - so here goes _

The pot for each child is £1400

Halifax Reg Saver 10% - but only allows £100 pm - £1200 tops

Scarborough Reg Saver 6.8% - allows £250 pm - all funds plus more if required

Scarborough Young Supersaver 5.55 - deposit full amount at onset

if someone can work out the interest gained on each account over 1 year & all the accounts have the interest applied at the end of the year, I'd be very grateful

Thanx

masonic

The first thing to say is that if the Supersaver account allows withdrawals, you should be looking at opening two of these accounts per child, so that you can hold the money in the Supersaver while it's waiting to be fed into one of the regular savers. If you do that, then you'll end up with the following interest...

Supersaver + Halifax RS
Approx. interest in the regular saver = 78/12 x 0.10/12 x £1200 = £65
Approx. interest in the Supersaver = ( 66/12 x 0.0555/12 x £1200 ) + ( 0.0555 x £200 ) = £42
Total = £107

Supersaver + Scarborough RS
Approx. regular saver interest = ( 15/5 x 0.068/12 x £1250 ) + ( 7 x 0.068/12 x £1400 ) = £77
Approx. Supersaver interest = ( 10/4 x 0.0555/12 x £1250 ) + ( 1 x 0.0555/12 x £150 ) = £15
Total = £92
(NB This only includes £1400 of contributions, and I've assumed you pay them in as quickly as possible to get the most interest. In reality you'd need to spread the final £150 over the last 7 months, or make an extra contribution of at least £10 pcm to fulfil the minimum funding requirements of the account.)

So, a combination of the Halifax RS and Scarborough Supersaver wins out, even though of the two regular savers the Halifax one produces the lower return in itself. However, if you plan to contribute more to the funds, the difference in interest between the accounts will be less.

virgin_moneysaver

many thanx for your time & trouble