The Top Easy Access Savings Discussion Area

Mr._H_2

BestSeagull said:

housebuyer143 said:

Eirambler said:

Absolutely, it will only be a relatively small number of people that shift their savings around like this, most people will just have their few thousand of savings in the Nationwide or Nat West at 1% (if even that) and will have never heard or Shawbrook or Tandem etc.

I have a friend with £200k in the bank from a house sale. It's in her current account earning no interest and she also hasn't split it between banks for the protection...

Her response being it's too hard to move it. 

Have you tried telling her in figures just how much she's missing out on? Even at just 4% it's £666 per month/£8,000 per year.

You can also frame it another way - in terms of the amount of work that she actually has to put in to get this done. Even if she split the money over three accounts, it shouldn't take more than two hours work. Then, if she has the cash for two months, she's effectively paid herself £666 an hour. That's, shall we say, a pretty good wage?

BestSeagull said:

Proceeds from house sales up to a certain amount are protected but for a limited time only. (I can't check the details at the moment as the website is down for maintenance)

The Temporary High Balance protection applies to sums up to £1 million and lasts for 6 months

jaypers

Was just considering opening a Shawbrook account until I saw the inflexible and completely ridiculous security questions. Favourite teacher is one…….I never had a favourite teacher! How would I ever remember in the future if I ever needed it? And you would be wrong thinking this was a one-off……oh no, favourite historical character. Nope, don’t have one or if I did I might decide it’s a different one next week. 

TheWoodler

Such security questions are actually fairly common across the industry. You could apply lateral thought to the teacher - could be a teacher who sticks in your mind, another memorable figure from your youth, or a fictional teacher from a book. It doesn’t matter what you put so long as you can remember it. 

I keep notes in the form of a prompt for security questions - so the answer is never written down. For example, I might say ‘French teacher in VI form’ or give an associative answer. The actual answer is still only something I will know, but at least I can give it consistently! The associative answer could even be unique to you - the teacher’s nickname at school, say, but meaningless to anyone else. 

friolento

jaypers said:

Was just considering opening a Shawbrook account until I saw the inflexible and completely ridiculous security questions. Favourite teacher is one…….I never had a favourite teacher! How would I ever remember in the future if I ever needed it? And you would be wrong thinking this was a one-off……oh no, favourite historical character. Nope, don’t have one or if I did I might decide it’s a different one next week. 

For these kind of questions, I never answer with information that someone else might know. For example, I would never use my mother's actual maiden name when they ask for mother's maiden name - because too many people know what her maiden name was.

I have a set of fake answers to all these questions:

• mother's maiden name
• favourite teacher
• first car
• first job
• favourite / first pet
• favourite sport
• favourite food
• memorable place
• memorable date
• memorable name
  
• etc etc etc

I use the same answers with all financial services providers. None of them has a means of verifying the answers - the only thing that matters is that you remember what answer you gave. It's essentially just another kind of password that you can choose freely.

tg99

Moving a large sum out of hsbc current account into various easy access savings accounts. Anyone know if the £25k per day limit applies across all channels cumulatively ie online, app, telephone….and thus pretty much limited to only moving that amount out each day? I know can fund some savings like Chip by debit card but think interest doesn’t start for a few days; Chaps I guess could be used too but the fee offsets most of the gain of doing so.

cwep2

tg99 said:

Moving a large sum out of hsbc current account into various easy access savings accounts. Anyone know if the £25k per day limit applies across all channels cumulatively ie online, app, telephone….and thus pretty much limited to only moving that amount out each day? I know can fund some savings like Chip by debit card but think interest doesn’t start for a few days; Chaps I guess could be used too but the fee offsets most of the gain of doing so.

It’s £25k per day cumulatively for HSBC unless you’re transferring to another account (in your name) inside HSBC, e.g. you could put 50k into the bonus saver. 

I think (but not sure) this is also only Mon-Fri. 

See https://www.hsbc.co.uk/content/dam/hsbc/gb/pdf/help/payment-limits.pdf

You can set up standing orders to pay out 25k every day for say 4 days to transfer 100k. 

There is a separate debit card daily limit which I think is set at £50k per day and is a limit of the system rather than per bank. So transfers by debit card might be possible up to £50k but you may not earn interest until they ‘clear’. There may be HSBC restrictions which also limit the size of individual debit card transactions (probably 25k). 

cwep2

aaj123 said:

allegro120 said:

aaj123 said:

Any decent tracker out there at the moment? I missed the recent BR-0.7% and only have the Skipton BR-1.1%.

Also, does Chase at 3.8% remain the highest paying 'proper account' that is truly instant access?

Kroo pays 4.1%.

Is there any con of Kroo at all? Seems like the best of all in terms of having a current account and getting a rate at the higher end.

There is a £10k daily withdrawal limit. If you put 50k there and want to move it to a better paying account, you’ll need to do it over several days. 

Similarly Marcus has a 20k limit, as does Al Rayan. 

Chase was 50k when I last checked, but places like Chip/Tandem will allow you to transfer the full 85k in one shot if you want. 

Asking what’s “truly instant access” will mean different things to different people. Some might argue that limits on withdrawals per day isn’t instant access, but for most people who don’t have those levels of savings they wouldn’t care/notice. 

For me the biggest issue is whether you get the payment same day, losing a days interest is a cost every time you make a withdrawal, both in interest terms and simply hassle. Some people would say access at weekends and bank holidays is required to call it instant access as well. I mean if I want a payment at 23:55 on a Saturday I don’t expect it to hit my account that day tbh but others might disagree. 

wmb194

cwep2 said:

aaj123 said:

allegro120 said:

aaj123 said:

Any decent tracker out there at the moment? I missed the recent BR-0.7% and only have the Skipton BR-1.1%.

Also, does Chase at 3.8% remain the highest paying 'proper account' that is truly instant access?

Kroo pays 4.1%.

Is there any con of Kroo at all? Seems like the best of all in terms of having a current account and getting a rate at the higher end.

There is a £10k daily withdrawal limit. If you put 50k there and want to move it to a better paying account, you’ll need to do it over several days. 

I haven't put any of this to the test but for me Kroo's app states that the daily limit for "paying friends in app" is £10k whilst it states the daily limit for a "bank transfer" is £250k and if I want to transfer more I need to contact customer support. I'm not entirely sure what the difference is between "paying friends in app" and a bank transfer - is the "friends in app" the 'Kroo' split costs between people feature it touts?

housebuyer143

BestSeagull said:

housebuyer143 said:

Eirambler said:

Absolutely, it will only be a relatively small number of people that shift their savings around like this, most people will just have their few thousand of savings in the Nationwide or Nat West at 1% (if even that) and will have never heard or Shawbrook or Tandem etc.

I have a friend with £200k in the bank from a house sale. It's in her current account earning no interest and she also hasn't split it between banks for the protection...

Her response being it's too hard to move it. 

Have you tried telling her in figures just how much she's missing out on? Even at just 4% it's £666 per month/£8,000 per year.
Proceeds from house sales up to a certain amount are protected but for a limited time only. (I can't check the details at the moment as the website is down for maintenance)

I tried but people just don't want to hear it 🤷‍♂️ some are just super attached to their high Street bank and don't want to move the be money even for £8000 a year apparently. 

housebuyer143

jaypers said:

Was just considering opening a Shawbrook account until I saw the inflexible and completely ridiculous security questions. Favourite teacher is one…….I never had a favourite teacher! How would I ever remember in the future if I ever needed it? And you would be wrong thinking this was a one-off……oh no, favourite historical character. Nope, don’t have one or if I did I might decide it’s a different one next week. 

You are best off keeping your answers to these various questions written somewhere, because at some point it becomes impossible to remember the password, passcode and answer variations.