The Top Easy Access Savings Discussion Area

chamelion

rb10 wrote: »

Why do you want monthly interest?

You do realise that with annual interest accounts, the interest is paid for each day that the money is in the account, even if the bulk of the money is withdrawn (or even the account closed) before the interest payment date.

true. guess i just prefer actually RECEIVING the money and seeing the deposit. in that way i can also instantly see if the amount is off cause the bank dropped the interest rate or something... (e.g. what's happening to my citibank account now). had it been annual, unless i'm really sitting on everything watchign every bank account's interest rate, i could've missed it.

chamelion

Mr._H wrote: »

Nothing!

You don't have to do it by standing order. I have a Natwest current account, a First Direct current account, an A&L current account and a few Vantage accounts. My salary goes into the Natwest account, but I then manually transfer it to FD, then £1000 goes to A&L and then to the first Vantage account, then between all the other Vantage accounts. All in a few minutes thanks to Faster Payments

think i'm going to set somethign similar to this up
can you have multiple halifax accounts that earn the 5quid/month or just one?

Patr100

rb10 wrote: »

Why do you want monthly interest?

You do realise that with annual interest accounts, the interest is paid for each day that the money is in the account, even if the bulk of the money is withdrawn (or even the account closed) before the interest payment date.

Not sure why you say that . The monthly paid accounts I have used still calculate interest daily. If the account is closed you usually get a final payment (often by cheque) for the interest in the days remaining from the last monthly payment date, up to the date the account was closed.

rb10

Patr100 wrote: »

Not sure why you say that . The monthly paid accounts I have used still calculate interest daily. If the account is closed you usually get a final payment (often by cheque) for the interest in the days remaining from the last monthly payment date, up to the date the account was closed.

... in exactly the same way as annually paid accounts operate.

Some people mistakenly believe that if, for example, they close an account paying annual interest after six months, then they won't get any interest. In fact, they will get six months' worth of interest on closure.

chamelion

Patr100 wrote: »

Not sure why you say that . The monthly paid accounts I have used still calculate interest daily. If the account is closed you usually get a final payment (often by cheque) for the interest in the days remaining from the last monthly payment date, up to the date the account was closed.

ok, here's my thinking.

current situation: have citibank account. when i signed up was earning 3.51% interest. let's say i get 50 quid a month interest.december 1st, i see 50 quid deposit, january 1st i see 50 quid deposit, february 1st i see 30 quid deposit. indication something is wrong as i havne't withdrawn anything. when i investigate, i find the rate has dropped down to 2.23% (or whatever.)

Annual interest situation: i sign up for an account in january at 3.51%. i pretty much just leave the account - no deposits, no withdrawals. a year later i see the interest credit, and when i calculate it its 2.5%. now, when i investigate, i find that in june the interest had dropped to 2.23%, but i had no idea.

rb10

chamelion wrote: »

ok, here's my thinking.

current situation: have citibank account. when i signed up was earning 3.51% interest. let's say i get 50 quid a month interest.december 1st, i see 50 quid deposit, january 1st i see 50 quid deposit, february 1st i see 30 quid deposit. indication something is wrong as i havne't withdrawn anything. when i investigate, i find the rate has dropped down to 2.23% (or whatever.)

Annual interest situation: i sign up for an account in january at 3.51%. i pretty much just leave the account - no deposits, no withdrawals. a year later i see the interest credit, and when i calculate it its 2.5%. now, when i investigate, i find that in june the interest had dropped to 2.23%, but i had no idea.

Good thinking, although in fact when you log in to your AA savings account, the current interest rate is in the middle of the first page you see, so there's never an excuse for not knowing that the rate has gone down.

chamelion

rb10 wrote: »

Good thinking, although in fact when you log in to your AA savings account, the current interest rate is in the middle of the first page you see, so there's never an excuse for not knowing that the rate has gone down.

excuse: i don't log into each one of my accounts multiple times a month to keep track of interest rate.

excuse2: most of my accounts don't revel interest rates up front. citibank online doesn't tell me, natwest online doesn't tell me, first direct online doesn't tell me, barclays online doesn't tell me.

easy thing to do: log in, see last 3 months activity, see interest credited is about the same each of the 3 months (increasing if anything). done. that's it for the quarter.

harder: log in, dig around for interest rates if its even published (which in most cases it isn't). see whether i oepned account before a certain date or after a certain date, check interest rate. if unclear, post on MSE. if still unclear phone to confirm. rinse, repeat every month, or risk losing out on the top rate interest from another account.

rb10

You seem to have missed the point of this discussion, which was that you said ...

chamelion wrote: »

was about to open the 3.15% AA account but just realized that it's interest annually.

chamelion wrote: »

excuse: i don't log into each one of my accounts multiple times a month to keep track of interest rate.

You only need to log in as often as you did before to check that monthly interest has been credited. On the first page you see, it'll say..

AA wrote:

The current interest rate of this account is 3.15% gross.

How much clearer could it be?

chamelion wrote: »

excuse2: most of my accounts don't revel interest rates up front. citibank online doesn't tell me, natwest online doesn't tell me, first direct online doesn't tell me, barclays online doesn't tell me.

However, the AA account that we are talking about here does tell you. You only need to log in as often as you did before to check monthly interest, and the interest rate will be right there for you to see. No digging around, phoning up, checking dates, or posting on MSE.

And if the balance of the account has changed, you don't even need to mess around with sums to see whether the interest rate is the same, as it tells you clearly.

anamenottaken

chamelion wrote: »

think i'm going to set somethign similar to this up
can you have multiple halifax accounts that earn the 5quid/month or just one?

Used to be multiple (up to three, I think - I have two) but now only one for sole and one joint per person.

chamelion

rb10 wrote: »

However, the AA account that we are talking about here does tell you. You only need to log in as often as you did before to check monthly interest, and the interest rate will be right there for you to see. No digging around, phoning up, checking dates, or posting on MSE.

based on this i'm likely to go ahead with it. i like it when they tell you nice and clear, no digging around. none of my other accounts do this.

think my next month agenda is to open the lloyds vantage account (x3 - the limit), max them out with the 7k per account, and the rest dump into the AA until my ISA allowance is renewed in april. the new limit of 5100 is such a god send!

that being said, based on my calculations, a 4% checking account will earn me more than any of the ISAs on offer right now, for the amount (about 12k) i have right now in ISAs. i'm thinking of it as a long term investment though, more you have in ISAs typically the higher the rate, but since i can't lump sum directly to that figure i need to build it up over years.