Fabulous Investment with negative fees. Get Paid to invest. No Catch.

fred246

Eco_Miser said:

I don't understand all the negativity on this thread. Yes, there are other ways to pay yourself £500 by debit card, but if you want to invest £500 or more each month, this method kills two birds with one stone. 

I've even used a variation to have Halifax pay the transaction fee on an investment at their sister company Iweb and another £5. That's still a tenner saved as I would have been investing anyway.

Yes I don't get it either. Investing monthly in a low cost global tracker is a common way to invest. People often ask what is the cheapest way to do it. This way is less than low cost. It's NO COST. What is there not to like? Obviously if you don't want to invest monthly or can't afford £500 per month it won't be for you. Investing monthly in Vanguard Lifestrategy is very popular. Is there a cheaper way than this? I don't think so.

fred246

You could open a reward account. Set up a transfer of £1500 a month into the account. Set up a regular £500 investment and a regular £1000 out again. Would all be automatic.

pafpcg

fred246 said:

You could open a reward account. Set up a transfer of £1500 a month into the account. Set up a regular £500 investment and a regular £1000 out again. Would all be automatic.

How have you automated the £500 "purchase" every month from your Halifax Reward debit card?

PS:  I suggest that the negativity you've sensed is down to the lack of originality in the proposal  -  it's covered ad nauseam in the thread pointed out in an earlier reply.  It's so obvious that I, and no doubt many others, have been regularly using a Reward debit card to deposit funds in S&S ISA accounts ever since Halifax first offered the £5 bonus months ago!

marycanary

I think the negativity is very unfortunate and rather unfair. Fred246 started his post by apologising if the idea had been suggested before. Not everyone is an old hand on the board and those who have been around for a while don't always check in every week. I hadn't heard of it and I thank Fred for the suggestion.

If someone is jumped on with the equivalent of "well derr, we've all been doing it for ages" it risks having a dampening effect on the board with people being nervous about posting. Replying to a post isn't mandatory if the suggestion isn't for you, it is permissible to ignore it. Or just say, "good idea, I've done it for years and it works." 

fred246

pafpcg said:

fred246 said:

You could open a reward account. Set up a transfer of £1500 a month into the account. Set up a regular £500 investment and a regular £1000 out again. Would all be automatic.

How have you automated the £500 "purchase" every month from your Halifax Reward debit card?

PS:  I suggest that the negativity you've sensed is down to the lack of originality in the proposal  -  it's covered ad nauseam in the thread pointed out in an earlier reply.  It's so obvious that I, and no doubt many others, have been regularly using a Reward debit card to deposit funds in S&S ISA accounts ever since Halifax first offered the £5 bonus months ago!

On the Halifax Share Dealing website you set up an automatic investment. It's £12.50 normally but a monthly automatic investment is £2. So you set up a standing order to pay £1500 in to the reward account at the start of each month. You then make an automatic monthly investment of £500 and send £1000 back to your normal current account. The originality comes from the OCF of 0.13% on the HSBC FTSE all world index. Here is a good global index tracker as recommended by monevator and many investing experts for 0% total fees. If you engage an IFA they will often charge 2% year after year although they will set up a portfolio to make investing seem more complicated.

pafpcg

marycanary said:

If someone is jumped on with the equivalent of "well derr, we've all been doing it for ages" it risks having a dampening effect on the board with people being nervous about posting. Replying to a post isn't mandatory if the suggestion isn't for you, it is permissible to ignore it. Or just say, "good idea, I've done it for years and it works." 

The postscript in my post was simply to explain why it might be that there was a negative reaction.  I wouldn't have bothered to post other than I'm curious about how to automate a debit card payment every month.

I agree with you and you were right to flag the issue - it can be borderline bullying when posters seem to gang-up on a newbie poster. 

You may not be aware that the subject of how to use a debit card to achieve a purchase threshold, for example the £500 for the Halifax Reward account, is a very sensitive issue on this forum.  Whole threads have been wiped and forum members have been suspended because of posts "debating" the options.

But have you noticed Fred246's post count?  He should know by now how the forum search facility works - enter "Halifax Reward £5" and a thread with 1,300 posts is the first in the list!  It's all in:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6113322/halifax-reward-account-changing-to-3-charge-with-lifestyle-rewards/p1
Read it now before it gets deleted!

fred246

The whole point is more of how to invest for negative fees rather than how to get £5. Lots of people are looking for low cost investments. People will say go to vanguard investor. So they charge 0.15% platform fee and Vanguard FTSE Global all cap has an OCF of 0.23 so total  0.38%. Halifax don't charge a percentage platform fee and their investment fee is returned and they give you and extra £3 back. The £3 is more than the OCF of 0.13%. So you are investing with absolutely NO FEES. If you want to invest £500 a month in a global index tracker is there a cheaper way?

Prism

fred246 said:

The whole point is more of how to invest for negative fees rather than how to get £5. Lots of people are looking for low cost investments. People will say go to vanguard investor. So they charge 0.15% platform fee and Vanguard FTSE Global all cap has an OCF of 0.23 so total  0.38%. Halifax don't charge a percentage platform fee and their investment fee is returned and they give you and extra £3 back. The £3 is more than the OCF of 0.13%. So you are investing with absolutely NO FEES. If you want to invest £500 a month in a global index tracker is there a cheaper way?

Its only free in the year that you buy it. Every year following that you continue to pay 0.13%. Its cheap, and possibly worth doing but its not free after year 1.

fred246

They are paying you up until you have £18k in. At year 3. After that you will be paying small amounts. Assuming Halifax don't change the terms of course.

Prism

fred246 said:

They are paying you up until you have £18k in. At year 3. After that you will be paying small amounts. Assuming Halifax don't change the terms of course.

Ok I get your point. I wouldn't say it would be 3 years though as I assume the fund would grow along the way and therefore maybe something between 2-3 years. To be fair it could also drop and therefore take much longer before you are spending your own cash.