Regular Saver Thread **New and Restarted**

veryintrigued

AirlieBird wrote: »

Good find, but their website says
Regular Saver (new members) 2.5% on up to £250 pm.
Members RS 2.75% on up to £350 pm.

But first page on here needs the rates correcting please SS

wadingthroughthesea

Hi all. Looking for some help. Noob question!

Going to save £800/month
Lower rate tax payer
No existing savings
No debt
Ideally easy access but would look at 1yr options
Don't mind some risk
Have a couple of £k to open the account
Not looking to buy a home

Just switched to a new current account so they're not an option.

Looking at the site, think I should go with one of the ~1.3% east access savers.

Any better options out there?

Many thanks.

ColdIron

Regular savers up to 5%, many are easy access

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/best-regular-savings-accounts

wadingthroughthesea

Thanks for replying.

They're mostly linked to current accounts which aren't an option for me as I've just switched elsewhere.

They're also capped at £250/month so I'd still need a place for the other £550/month.

ctdctd

wadingthroughthesea wrote: »

Thanks for replying.

They're mostly linked to current accounts which aren't an option for me as I've just switched elsewhere.

They're also capped at £250/month so I'd still need a place for the other £550/month.

Nothing to stop you from having more than one current account and more than one regular saver with different providers.

ValiantSon

You can open more than one current account, which would give you access to the regular savers.

More than one regular saver would use up your £800 per month.

Even if you can't deposit all of the £800 in a regular saver, you would still earn more interest on the portion that you could than in an easy access savings account.

The biggest barrier to you achieving higher interest rates is your own willingness (or not) to managing the money in multiple accounts.

There is no risk involved in saving (other than the erosion of value caused by inflation). If you are looking at products with some risk, then you would be looking at investments, but in the situation that you describe, you are not yet in a safe position to begin investing. Build up your cash reserves first so that they cover at least three (and beter still, six) months of outgoings.

wadingthroughthesea

Thanks for the replies.

Looking at the linked current accounts that you need to have, they seem to require that you fully switch to them or have £1k incoming/2 direct debits outgoing?

I can only meet those requirements for my existing current account.

RG2015

wadingthroughthesea wrote: »

Thanks for the replies.

Looking at the linked current accounts that you need to have, they seem to require that you fully switch to them or have £1k incoming/2 direct debits outgoing?

I can only meet those requirements for my existing current account.

Which current account(s) do you have?

Nationwide have a 5% regular saver for £250 per month that requires a Flexdirect current account but no direct debits or monthly pay-in.

The Flexdirect current account also pays 5% on up to £2,500 in the current account for one year and that requires a monthly pay in of £1,000. But you can pay this is from another current account and then transfer this back to where it came from.

First Direct pay 5% on their regular saver if you have a First Direct current account but that does not require any monthly pay in. You do though need to open an easy access saver which I did and just put £1 in.

The banks all have slightly different conditions so it is worth checking each one.

PS: For clarification, to qualify for the First Direct regular saver you need to satisfy one of several conditions. One is to pay in £1,000 every month but another merely requires that you have a savings account other than the regular saver.

ColdIron

You don't need to switch, you can just open these to run alongside your existing current account, always handy in case of aTSB, Lloyds, RBS etc meltdown

The Nationwide FlexDirect will keep you going for three months then you can look at its RS with the First Direct and Santander offerings. None of these require DDs or switching. The monthly pay in requirements are trivial and can be automated with standing orders

It's up to you, a little admin and 5% or settle for 1.35%

RG2015

ColdIron wrote: »

You don't need to switch, you can just open these to run alongside your existing current account, always handy in case of aTSB, Lloyds, RBS etc meltdown

The Nationwide FlexDirect will keep you going for three months then you can look at its RS with the First Direct and Santander offerings. None of these require DDs or switching. The monthly pay in requirements are trivial and can be automated with standing orders

It's up to you, a little admin and 5% or settle for 1.35%

I believe that the Santander 123 range does require direct debits and the 123 Lite also costs £1 per month. I recently downgraded from 123 to 123 lite and asked if I still needed to pay in £500 and have two direct debits to qualify for the 5% regular saver. The Santander customer services person said that these were conditions of the account so yes. However, they also said that I would need to continually miss the £500 monthly pay in to jeopardise my regular saver eligibility.

I am not sure if this also applied to the two active direct debit condition.