Moving Money if Banking System faces a crisis

Gumbee1969

My wife has money in a savings account and is worried about the banking system crashing like it did back in 2008. She had lost a substantial amount of money with shares being wiped out.  She wants to know is it worth transferring some money over to me as a precaution. She is aware of the up to 85k compensation scheme if this happens but because her savings exceed this amount  she is feeling nervous.  We both bank separately at different banks. 

eskbanker

The banking system didn't crash in 2008.

A number of banks required substantial injections of public money to continue operating (losing significant share value), and some smaller providers went under, but there weren't any widespread issues in accessing money outside of those....

Having said that, it is indeed prudent to keep all personal savings within any given institution to within the FSCS limit, so if she's exceeding this, then she should move the excess elsewhere, but that could be another account with an unrelated institution rather than shifting it to another person.

Voyager2002

Just to clarify what eskbanker advised, she can open accounts in her own name with several different banks and so split her money between them.

d63

more worrying, perhaps, what if the internet goes down for a considerable period of time?
on another thread people report trouble accessing their postoffice account (indeed, i could not log in myself when i tried today, or rather could not progress beyond the login page), but some sort of general outage and, well, everything is screwed! 
so, keep a wad of banknotes under the bed? oh, i don't know!  all this covid business is getting me real nervous lately, especially not knowing where ones next supermarket delivery will be coming from and all. 

kuratowski

I'm sure better days will return, as someone rather famous said recently.

In the meantime, I am beginning to wonder if we don't need a dedicated board for the doom-mongers, goldbugs and preppers.  There seems to be a lot of it about lately.

ColdIron

A couple of years back it was mooted whether Savings & Investments needed a bitcoin sub board

Malthusian

d63 said:

more worrying, perhaps, what if the internet goes down for a considerable period of time?

The Internet can't go down unless every single computer plugged into an Ethernet port (or Wi-fi) explodes. Contrary to what you may have seen on the documentary The IT Crowd, the Internet is not a single entity that can be turned on and off. It is every single computer that has the hardware to connect to every single other computer via shared protocols (which the vast majority of them). It's not a big truck, it's a series of tubes.

The scenario you actually want to consider is something like the Lloyds online banking shutdown.

worldtraveller

kuratowski said:

I'm sure better days will return, as someone rather famous said recently.

In the meantime, I am beginning to wonder if we don't need a dedicated board for the doom-mongers, goldbugs and preppers.  There seems to be a lot of it about lately.

Indeed! I'm sure it's not in this case, but they're also, more often than not, the first post ever on MSE by the OP. Just saying...

Albermarle

especially not knowing where ones next supermarket delivery will be coming from and all. 

Although I presume supermarket deliveries services are busy , the supermarkets themselves are almost fully stocked again.

My local Tesco's is only really missing Paracetomol and hand sanitisers. Otherwise fully stocked with freshmeat and veg/fruit;eggs;beer and even toilet rolls. So much for all the talk of the food supply chain running out .

d63

Albermarle said:

especially not knowing where ones next supermarket delivery will be coming from and all. 

Although I presume supermarket deliveries services are busy , the supermarkets themselves are almost fully stocked again.

My local Tesco's is only really missing Paracetomol and hand sanitisers. Otherwise fully stocked with freshmeat and veg/fruit;eggs;beer and even toilet rolls. So much for all the talk of the food supply chain running out .

busy!!! i expect they are!!! my problem is of right now, there is not one single home delivery slot available in my area at either sainsburys, tesco, ocado, waitrose, morrisons, or asda. (co-op don't deliver around here). hopefully something will turn up in the days to come, but i am finding it increasingly difficult to stay calm about all this as even before this covid started i was housebound and relied entirely on home deliveries. time to start thinking of alternatives i guess. but never mind! plenty of people far worse off than me. 

Malthusian

Have you contacted the supermarkets to let them know you are a vulnerable customer? (I realise that even for those who are registered, delivery slots are in short supply.)