The Top Easy Access Savings Discussion Area

ahai1

ING are backed by the Dutch but as it has been proven even if the worse were to happen Gordon Brown and Alistair will rescue the money.

HATTERMAN

I am new to this site and have been reading the posts from you guys & gals who are struggling like me trying to get the best returns on our savings. I have noted moans about Tesco's and AA rates tumbling. I have savings in both of these and they were both 6% when I opened them ! I also note that Barclays regular saver has been mentioned as possibly one of the better current options. I have been doing my sums and the max Barclays could return is £97.50 pa before tax. However, the Halifax regular saver account, whilst only paying 4% allows maximum savings of £500 per month and would return £130.00 pa. However if you dripfeed from say AA (2.5%), the Halifax/AA option would return a net £48.75 pa benefit, whilst the Barclays/AA option would return a net benefit of £56.90 versus leaving in the AA.

Whilst at first sight the Halifax appears to be the best option, in reality (in the above scenario) there is less than a tenner difference between the two! No wonder it's all so confusing ?? Not megabucks but look after the pennies........

rb10

There's nothing to stop you going for both of them. Put the first £250 in Barclays, then anything else you've got up to £500 into Halifax.

By the way, you probably don't want to hear this, but the Halifax rate was 5% until yesterday!

nig0609

alanji wrote: »

I see you edited your post to make it read right but I am still unsure what you mean. Most bonuses are fixed for a certain period of time - eg Martin's best buy Ulster Bank pays 3.94%, including a 0.5% bonus lasting six months. The underlying rate is variable but the bonus is fixed (for 6 months).
If you look at the Egg account you will see a variable rate bonus added to a variable interest rate. So what is the point of a bonus which could be reduced to 0.1% tomorrow? It is simply an account paying a variable rate of 3.35% with the certainty that it will be a lot less in 12 months.
I would also point out the Citibank account also has a variable bonus.

EDIT: The new Sainsbury account is a 'proper' bonus guaranteeing 2% over base for 12 months

I stand corrected, and I agree, whats the point of a variable bonus. Not a very good incentive.
I suppose they might be covering themselves incase interest rates soar?

alanji

nig0609 wrote: »

I stand corrected, and I agree, whats the point of a variable bonus. Not a very good incentive.
I suppose they might be covering themselves incase interest rates soar?

I think it is just to mislead people as I almost was. I opened Egg accounts for myself and my wife but have not yet transferred any money. I will wait to see what happens after todays anticipated cut. The trouble is by withdrawing from one account into a current account and then transferring to the new account you lose about a week's interest, so need to be sure the higher rate will last for at least a few weeks to make it worthwhile.

Investec High 5 is a good account if you can afford to tie up at least £25k for 3 months. It pays the average of the top 5 moneyfacts accounts (including notice and bonus accounts) and currently pays 3.41%. I have just found out that moneyfacts do not include accounts with a bonus of over 1% so Egg & Citibank do not get included in their lists. Seems a bit ridiculous as interest on the variable rate accounts they include can be changed at any time. Incidently, if anyone wants to open an Investec account, send me a personal message first, as we can both earn a £50 introductiion fee.

Regarding the Sainsbury account paying 3%, including a 'real' 2% bonus for 1 year, Martin says "The catch is that if you withdraw any cash during the first year, the interest rate drops to 1.25% (we're still checking whether this is backdated). The Sainsbury website now says the rate is only reduced from the date you withdraw the money. If applying, do not confuse it with the Instant Access account. The website states:

We promise you attractive rates
We promise that until December 2010 you'll always earn higher than market average interest on your instant access saver account.
Each month we use moneyfacts.co.uk - the leading independent financial comparison site - to compare the interest rates you receive on your instant access saver account against the average rates on over 300 equivalent accounts.

And with a "rate promise" until 2010 it must be paying a good rate of interest, eh?

It pays a miserly 0.25%, rising to a lofty 0.5% if you save over £100,000 :mad: The interest rate is not stated up front on the application page so you could easily apply for this account by mistake - this happened to some people with the two Tesco accounts at the end of last year.

Doshwaster

Experts,

I currently have a dormant Egg Internet savings account with only a few pounds in it which according to their rates information is paying 1.24% gross.

I see that they are now offering 3.35% (including bonus) for new accounts. My question is does "new account" mean that this is available to new customers only or can I just open another savings account to get this new rate? I'd be looking at transferring in about £10k from another savings account whose rate has falled through the floor in the last few months.

Doshwaster

NickyDee wrote: »

From reading their Savings Homepage it seems that this would be acceptable, reading between the lines it looks as though there would be some sort of restriction on transferring between Egg accounts.

Thanks. It does say "This is a limited offer for new accounts only, and for new money into Egg that is not already held within an existing Egg Savings Account (Internet) or Egg Savings Account (Investor)."

That seems to imply that it is for new accounts and new money but you can be an existing customer. Even if you had money is an existing Egg savings account I don't suppose there would be anything to stop you transferring it out to another bank then back in again.

10_66

alanji wrote: »

I have just found out that moneyfacts do not include accounts with a bonus of over 1% so Egg & Citibank do not get included in their lists.

Both Egg and Citibank are listed on Moneyfacts HERE.

Edit: Don't lnow why the link doesn't show the actual selected page, but if you choose the tab "savings search", select variable account, select no notice accounts, both the Egg and Citibank accounts are mentioned.

ahai1

As fixed rate bonds are discussed in the aritcle I thought that I would add this one on I found it in the moneyfacts website and it was missed by Dan in the article. (MSE articles sometimes miss some of the smaller providers). Anyway the Bank of Cyprus UK is offering a really good bond and the good news is that for those of you without cheques books you can pay in by BACS or debit card and it only starts from £1. http://www.bankofcyprus.co.uk/main.asp?id=6185 The email address is not easier to find so I thought I would include it here it is [EMAIL="customerserice@bankofcyprus.co.uk"]customerserice@bankofcyprus.co.uk[/EMAIL] and the phone number is a 0845 one but it also has the +44 one so all you have to do is to replace the +44 and add a 0 instead.

I have asked to be sent the forms via post as I don't have a printer.

aarangio

Lewis_Gerolemou wrote: »

ING Direct have just offered me 3.5% on instant access no penalties including 1.96% bonus fixed for one year, how safe are they, does uk bank guarantee apply to them?

Hi ya Lewis_Gerolemou,

Just wondering The 3.5% is that definitely for 12 months as I just got it but it was only for 6 months they offered me as I came from Kaupthing Edge as a special offer?

For anyone interested ICICI savings rate looks like it's dropping to 2.45% on Monday the 9th..
http://www.moneyfacts.co.uk/money/savings/3/internet-savings-accounts.aspx

Adrian