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Retiredin2009

“
Jet lag kicking in .... I haven't slept for over 26 hours
Originally posted by Retiredin2009
”
Surely not the best time to make decisions?
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ozaz

I'm assuming you want to choose among the current accounts you already have rather than open new accounts. So how about downgrade your Santander 123 account (£5/month fee) to a 123 Lite (£1/month fee) and use that as your sole current account. You will earn the same rate of cashback on bills as with the 123 account and this will presumably exceed the £1/month fee.

Then open a savings account with Marcus by Goldman Sachs to hold your cash savings. This is done online very easily in a matter of minutes and will get you the 1.5% AER you have been getting from some of your existing current accounts.

eskbanker

Retiredin2009 wrote: »

I have 5 bank accounts that I shuffle money through.

I have just spent the past 3 hours doing just that and updating my spreadsheet because I was on holiday.

:eek:

Three hours to conduct and record a few inter-bank transfers?! Many on here have entirely automated the whole thing and others control more accounts manually in minutes....


Anyway, I'd repeat the frequently-offered advice on here that it's worth retaining current accounts with at least two different banking groups for resilience, i.e. protecting you against technical outages, disputes, card theft/loss, etc.

To a certain extent this can be handled via a separate savings account, but not one that only deals through a nominated current account, such as Marcus, as that wouldn't achieve enough segregation if the only way of accessing the funds was via a current account that may not be accessible.

Ballard

You haven’t gone into detail about the three hours spreadsheet work but is it really necessary? If you do feel that you need to compile a spreadsheet is there a way of downloading the transactions to a csv file and automating the process somewhat?

Not that there’s anything against detailed accounts if that’s your thing.

LobsterMemory

I'm going to guess that the ones who can fully automate the banking merry-go-round are going to be more the "I've got x grand of spare cash variety", it's not so straight forward when you actually need to spend some of it.

So, for example, this month, I'll put aside my regular amount for expenses due within a year to my easy access account, but the service charge is due so that will come out as will my football club membership so that too. Then I splurged some money on something so I'll top up the short-term splurge account from the long term splurge. Oh, and the one year fixes mature, so they will need allocating accordingly. And so on.

I make it that each month I have 46 scheduled transactions, only 1 of which, the Nationwide Regular Saver payment is truly automatic. And that finishes this month...

colsten

LobsterMemory wrote: »

I'm going to guess that the ones who can fully automate the banking merry-go-round are going to be more the "I've got x grand of spare cash variety", it's not so straight forward when you actually need to spend some of it.

If you have £20K in a 123 account, as the OP does, you belong to the "I've got x grand of spare cash variety"

colsten

ozaz wrote: »

Then open a savings account with Marcus by Goldman Sachs to hold your cash savings. This is done online very easily in a matter of minutes and will get you the 1.5% AER you have been getting from some of your existing current accounts.

Marcus, and Cynergy, yield more net interest than the 123, as they have no charges. It's a variable rate, though, and only good for 12 months.

Zero_Sum

colsten wrote: »

Marcus, and Cynergy, yield more net interest than the 123, as they have no charges. It's a variable rate, though, and only good for 12 months.

Theres quite a few accounts that offer more than the 1.2% return you get on full fat 123 tbf. The only thing as you sugggest is you'll probably need to move about once a year.

Zanderman

Retiredin2009 wrote: »

Ok it might be slight exaggeration but having to sign into and close 5 bank accounts on-line and keep track of all these transfers at my age, and suffering jet-lag as well, is getting a bit much for me.

I want the simple life, all the money going into and out of the same account with me just needing to look at it two or three times a year.

I know I can get a bank to transfer the DDs but is there a bank that will transfer my pensions, and my wife's?

Closing accounts these days is most easily done by switching them - possibly all into the same account. Saves a lot of hassle, and the bank does it for you.

Re looking at it '2 or 3 times a year'. Not sure what you mean, as that seems overly laid-back so I might be missing something, - but I'd strongly recommend 'looking at it' at least weekly, or monthly tops! Just to make sure nothing untoward is going on. Especially if you only have one account.

Re pension 'transfers' I assume you mean moving incoming pension payments? Which a switch would do automatically - but you might want to contact pension providers as back-up to that. But you say all your pensions are paid to BoS? So if you kept that as your one account and switched all the others into that it's all done isn't it?

colsten

Retiredin2009 wrote: »

Well, I calculated that with the interest I was paid for all my accounts (the cash back and fees from my Santander account equals a negative £1 over the year as I only get CT cash back for 10 months) I got the equivalent of £400 interest on a varying balance between £20,000 to £24,000.

You could make the same amount of interest you earn now PLUS you could keep most of your cashback if you opted for a 123 Lite and put most of your spare cash into a 1.5% AER savings account.

tempus_fugit

Jet lag, can't be bothered, etc etc. Give me a break. You're retired, you've got plenty of time to manage 5 accounts. I've got over a dozen accounts and about five pensions to manage and it takes me about an hour every week to update the spreadsheets and other software and that's only because I am a geek and love doing it. And I have a part-time job and a small amount of voluntary work as well as looking after the garden, the car and half the housework and I've still got loads of time to spare.

As for the standing orders etc, basically you set them up and forget about them (ok, you have to be aware of them but there's nothing to be updated, just making sure they go through and that's covered by the weekly check). It's not that difficult but as people have suggested, just keep one account and switch the others into it if it's too hard for you. Sorry to sound harsh about it but if five accounts are too much for you then maximising returns from bank accounts is probably not for you.