Santa's coming - with 8.50%

mary

LittleVoice wrote: »

Well, the quote in my post to which you are referring was direct quotation from First Direct's website.

My reading is that though you don't have to keep a £1,500 balance, if you don't you will be charged £10 (and it didn't mention not being charged that for the first half-year but I'm not disputing it may appear elsewhere).

I phoned them again today to verify this and although the young lady could not quote chapter and verse from the Ts and Cs, she did confirm your quote. Provided you have something like, as in my case, the Everyday esaver account open as well, you do not have to fund the account with £1500 every month and no fee is charged.

Beate

I had a Christmas Saver once with Bradford & Bingley. A whopping 10% on £150 for 10 months. On these £1,500 drip-fed into the account I got about £50 interest at the end. Pathetic.

caveman38

I can agreewith the post above. As a HSBC customer who already has the 8% RS with them, I thought I would take advantage of the same scheme with the sister company.
Originally I was going for the 12% with the A&L but you need £500 going in their current account every month to transfer the £250 to RS. Unfortunately after 12 months that scheme stops and I beleive you will not be able to begin again. With the HSBC ones I think you can stop after 12 months, cash in and then start again. With that in mind I think they are better.
Back to the First Direct. I have just been on the phone to their applications dept and have been told that with another product opened with the RS their current account does not have to be funded with £1500 to stop the £10 levy.
I was told that I could say. Have a SO from HSBC to FD for £270 which they could transfer £250 to the RS and £10 to the eSaver and leave £10 in the current account and avoid charges.
I will wait for you guys to put your opinions/ arguments before I go ahead. I may have missed something or CS rep misinformed me.

I suppose if Iwant to be super tight. I could do that SO once and for the remaining months just SO £250.

mary

10% on any figure is a very reasonable, even after deduction of tax. If it's only on £150 p.m., so be it, it's not a huge figure. You can't expect miracles from depositing £150 each month. If you can find somewhere better to invest £1,000 or £5,000 p.m. with guaranteed 10% p.m., please let us know.

To some people £50 is a lot of money - a pair of shoes, money off the Xmas food bill, or money towards husband/wife/childrens Xmas presents.

If you don't want interest at 10%, then I suggest you leave it in a bog standard current account earning 0.1% instead!!!

mary

caveman38 wrote: »

I can agreewith the post above. As a HSBC customer who already has the 8% RS with them, I thought I would take advantage of the same scheme with the sister company.
Originally I was going for the 12% with the A&L but you need £500 going in their current account every month to transfer the £250 to RS. Unfortunately after 12 months that scheme stops and I beleive you will not be able to begin again. With the HSBC ones I think you can stop after 12 months, cash in and then start again. With that in mind I think they are better.
Back to the First Direct. I have just been on the phone to their applications dept and have been told that with another product opened with the RS their current account does not have to be funded with £1500 to stop the £10 levy.
I was told that I could say. Have a SO from HSBC to FD for £270 which they could transfer £250 to the RS and £10 to the eSaver and leave £10 in the current account and avoid charges.
I will wait for you guys to put your opinions/ arguments before I go ahead. I may have missed something or CS rep misinformed me.

You are correct in what you say. I'm even just leaving my original £10 in the First account and £10 in the Esaver and simply funding the max £300 p.m. into the Regular Saver from the First account.

Yes, A&L Regular Saver you do stop and possibly start again if they have the same thing happening 12 months down the line. They are prone to chopping and changing Premier/Premier Direct accounts. You have to be an old customer for at least 3 months before you can reapply, so I agree it's rather messy at times. However Halifax RS @ 7% just rolls on year on year, shame they don't ever change the rate.

Beate

mary wrote: »

10% on any figure is a very reasonable, even after deduction of tax. If it's only on £150 p.m., so be it, it's not a huge figure. You can't expect miracles from depositing £150 each month. If you can find somewhere better to invest £1,000 or £5,000 p.m. with guaranteed 10% p.m., please let us know.

To some people £50 is a lot of money - a pair of shoes, money off the Xmas food bill, or money towards husband/wife/childrens Xmas presents.

If you don't want interest at 10%, then I suggest you leave it in a bog standard current account earning 0.1% instead!!!

I am not suggesting you should not have a Regular Saver. What I was trying to say is that people (including myself back then) get blinded by seemingly high rates, but they don't see that the restricted amount of money they are allowed to pay in is not going to give them wonderful returns. I have the HSBC Regular Saver and while this is 8% and thus 0.5% less than the above mentioned saver, it allows to save up to £250 a month, which naturally means you will have earned more interest at the end of the 12 months.

anditsinthere

mary wrote: »

10% on any figure is a very reasonable, even after deduction of tax. If it's only on £150 p.m., so be it, it's not a huge figure. You can't expect miracles from depositing £150 each month. If you can find somewhere better to invest £1,000 or £5,000 p.m. with guaranteed 10% p.m., please let us know.

To some people £50 is a lot of money - a pair of shoes, money off the Xmas food bill, or money towards husband/wife/childrens Xmas presents.

If you don't want interest at 10%, then I suggest you leave it in a bog standard current account earning 0.1% instead!!!

You are quite right regarding saving into a high interest savings account....£50 is a lot to me if i had got that i would of been happy because i cant save £150 a month every month, plus like Mary says it's money off xmas presents.

caveman38

You are correct in what you say. I'm even just leaving my original £10 in the First account and £10 in the Esaver and simply funding the max £300 p.m. into the Regular Saver from the First account.

What did you do then Mary. Send SO 1st. month for £320 and then set up 11 SO's for the bare £300. BTW are you HSBC if so are the SO/transfers immediate or are they cleared.

mary

Originally another poster got wind of the First Direct Saver account becoming available on Nov 1st, so I opened a First Account around the end of October with £10 and declared I had an interest in having the RS as and when it was available 1st November.

Then at the end of October I transferred £300 into the 1st Account from my Lloyds current account, so that when I rang them up on the 2nd November and asked them to open the RS account the £300 was already in there for them to immediately transfer across that day to the RS, as it is instant. They then set up the SO from the First Account to the RS account whilst I was on the phone. I believe I could see it more or less instantly. Just to cover myself I also opened up the Esaver, so that I had an additional savings product with them.

All I simply do is make sure I have sent money across from Lloyds to FD at the end of a month, so it is ready for the 2nd of the month for First Direct.

Hope I haven't missed anything for you.

Don't know about HSBC, don't have an account with them.

s71hj

Beate wrote: »

I had a Christmas Saver once with Bradford & Bingley. A whopping 10% on £150 for 10 months. On these £1,500 drip-fed into the account I got about £50 interest at the end. Pathetic.

The only reason people get confused is because there isn't a straightforward way to express the rate. You can hardly expect the bank to pay you the annual rate on money that was only in their hands for 1 month, or 2 months. They could be completely clear by quoting the daily rate 0.027397%, but that would hardly be user friendly either. Just because something makes you feel you've been had it doesn't mean you actually have been had.