Is this OK for us?

knightstyle

Have read the advice on MSE about savings. We have about £140k from the sale of our French house, UK house now on the market and when it sells will need that money to buy next house.
Think we will each open a P.O. online saving account and split the money to get full protection. this gives 1.45% not much but better than the 0.1% our Santander savings account is giving!
We will obviously need the money in a few months and will be able to give about 14 days notice.
What do you think?

Flim

.just be aware of the many reported problems regarding getting money out of the PO....and their customer service is non existent..

xylophone

https://uk.virginmoney.com/savings/products/double_take_e_saver_issue_9

might suit in the circumstances.

YorkshireBoy

knightstyle wrote: »

Think we will each open a P.O. online saving account and split the money to get full protection.

If you open a joint account you'll get the "full protection"

But personally I'd open 2 accounts, using different providers.

badger09

I would probably use Marcus @ 1.5%

PO would be way down my list due to the many posts over several years, detailing withdrawal issues.

knightstyle

Thanks everyone. We have now opened a joint Virgin account to keep the money in.

knightstyle

Well it is not so easy! A week later and Virgin want certified copies of various documents which we will have to pay to get certified plus the bank, TSB want £30 to transfer the money into the account!
WHY do they make it so hard to open a saving account?
Virgin say the Police station can certify for free but they require a senior officer and we don't have any in our station>

eskbanker

knightstyle wrote: »

Well it is not so easy! A week later and Virgin want certified copies of various documents which we will have to pay to get certified plus the bank, TSB want £30 to transfer the money into the account!
WHY do they make it so hard to open a saving account?
Virgin say the Police station can certify for free but they require a senior officer and we don't have any in our station>

If opening an account with Virgin is problematic then there are many other savings account providers, some with not dissimilar interest rates: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/savings-accounts-best-interest/

TSB are presumably looking for a fee to shift the money in one go via the chargeable CHAPS same day payment service, but you can do it free if you split it into multiple transfers (possibly as few as two) to bring each one below their Faster Payments limits.

bowlhead99

knightstyle wrote: »

Well it is not so easy! A week later and Virgin want certified copies of various documents which we will have to pay to get certified plus the bank, TSB want £30 to transfer the money into the account!
WHY do they make it so hard to open a saving account?

They don't know you, and you want to dump a hundred and forty grand into their vaults. All financial institutions have policies and procedures around opening accounts, especially if it's a new customer they don't know well Some take a different approach from others as they are free to design their own policies following the general principles that everyone follows.

The TSB fee isn't any fault of Virgin's ; if you wanted them to send £140k somewhere else in one lump for same day value (say if you were buying another property) it wouldn't usually be free of charge. They will have a limit on what you can send using faster payments (for free) so you could split into smaller chunks if fees are a problem.

ManofLeisure_2

knightstyle wrote: »

Virgin say the Police station can certify for free but they require a senior officer and we don't have any in our station>

Crikey, what a waste of that officer's time!

knightstyle

Sorry eskbanker but there aren't many other accounts with similar interest rates and easy to set up!

Post Office is another one we were going to set up but looking at the small print interest is only 0.25% unless you leave the money there for over a year.