Need some help stoozing my bank accounts!

JillsDaughter

Hope someone can help me with the mess that is my many bank accounts, some of which are legacy accounts or that I've taken out on MSE advice to get cash back / benefits!

I haven't switched accounts for ages but think now would be a good time to reap the financial rewards and wonder if anyone can point me in the right direction for which switches would work best for me. I'm happy to play the long game if moving or setting up some DDs and SOs would help maximise benefits.

Currently two salaries (mine paid monthly and OHs paid weekly), paid into different (joint) accounts then most household bills by direct debit from the monthly one and most spending and saving from the weekly one.

Monthly joint account
Santander 123 account, pay £5/month for this and net about £8 per month from the cash back and interest and normally 12 direct debits and 2 standing orders come out each month

Weekly joint account
Lloyds Gold Service account, pay £14.95/month for this (but i like the benefits of travel and mobile phone insurance and have used these in the past), 4 standing orders come out of this account each week to feed various "save to spend" accounts...

Nationwide current account
In OHs name only, no fee, drip feed this £25/week and is used for car expenses and saves throughout the year but no regular payments coming out

HSBC current account
In my name only, no fee, drip feed this £25/week and is used for clothes expenses during the year. Also drip feed £60/week a which is used to pay a HSBC loan each month (1 standing order)

I don't really want to switch away from Lloyds, i know i could probably save on the monthly fee but like the convenience of the insurances and the online banking.

Would i be better off splitting some of the DDs from the Santander account so that I could effectively switch 3 accounts (the joint one, the nationwide one and the HSBC one?). Should i use the Nationwide 'refer a friend' to get that bonus? Can i benefit from switching Santander to RBS, or with more DDs in the Nationwide switch that to First Direct? Don't have any Natwest links at the moment, in either of our names.

All accounts run in credit most of the time (Lloyds sometimes overdrawn but weekly salary means generally not).

Advice anyone?

PRAISETHESUN

Stoozing refers to using free money from the banks (typically in the form of 0% credit card and overdrafts) to then transfer to high interest savings to effectively get interest for free. None of the accounts you've mentioned appear to have an overdraft capable of doing this, so I would probably avoid going so as the interest you'd gain would be less than the fees for going overdrawn.

In terms of maximising your current set up, I'd probably look into downgrading your Santander 123 account to the lite version, and transferring your savings to a Marcus account. You still get the cashback on DDs but the monthly fee is only £1, and the Marcus savings account pays the same interest rate without any fees. The Lloyds account is a bit expensive, but if you use the benefits then it might be okay to keep it as it is - I would suggest figuring out which of the benefits you actually use and see if you can get quotes for equivalent cover elsewhere for less than £179.40/year (combined for all insurances, etc), and if so then I'd probably ditch it for the cheaper option.

If you can consolidate your ingoings/outgoings into a single account then you could definitely use them for switching. You could take advantage of the Nationwide Refer A Friend scheme by getting your OH to recommend you, and switching one of these accounts with 2 DDs. First Direct and NatWest/RBS doesn't require any DDs as far as I know, so should be easier to take advantage of the switch without having to move any DDs around.

konark

You're not a Stoozer, you're a Bank Tart.