Notice Accounts

SirHugo

janusdesign said:

SirHugo said:

Received a letter today from Dudley Building Society informing me that the interest rate on their 60 Day Notice Online account is decreasing from 5.40% to 4.35%.
This change takes effect from 3rd May 2024. There are no penalties for any withdrawals within 30 days of the date of the letter (the 17th April). 

I had already given notice on an amount that I withdrew today, so will be closing the account entirely now.
Moving my money to my Oxbury 90 day notice account at 5.51%. Just hope this doesn't start dropping now too.

got a similar letter - their 90-Day will go from 5.35% to 4.40% on the above date... that appears to be their top rate of all of their accounts.

it might have been nice to throw a small amount into an EA account to keep the online account alive, but £50 @ 2.45% doesn't appeal to me... they have a 4.40% RS that you don't need to pay into every month, so will have to check back to see if it was originally a hassle to open my first Dudley Account - that was back 2 years ago when they had their 4.75% 1-yr fix which I seem to remember was a leading rate then (but would only accept one deposit!).

Yes, I also would like to keep my online account alive but personally there are no savings accounts now worth bothering with. I joined them in July last year when I opened a 90 day notice account.

Maybe there's a possibility that the online portal stays open even without any live accounts? I might query it with them when I close my 60 Day account through secure messaging.

gwapenut

I think a 1% rate reduction is quite harsh when base rates and other rates are not falling by anywhere near that amount. That said, it was predictable by looking at their entire range of interest rates. I might just close my Dudley easy access which has been open for years, because they are not of any strategic use and carpet bagging days are over.

allegro120

refluxer said:

allegro120 said:

Burcot said:

Just noticed my RCi 95day is reducing from 5.46 to 4.95 from 21/4.  I had foolishly not been keeping up to date and was rushing  and had just cancelled my withdrawal meaning I am stuck for another 95 days.  

They are reducing from 29th April. If you request withdrawal today, you'll get your money on 24th July... and don't forget to withdraw interest when it's credited too

Better to request account closure (if you intend to empty the account) instead of requesting a withdrawal of the current balance, otherwise you'll get caught in that (almost) endless interest loop

I don't mind the interest loop, it is long but very small in value and significantly decreasing every month.  I definitely don't want to close the account (it's only £1 to keep it running), it might become useful in future, you never know.

refluxer

allegro120 said:

refluxer said:

Better to request account closure (if you intend to empty the account) instead of requesting a withdrawal of the current balance, otherwise you'll get caught in that (almost) endless interest loop

I don't mind the interest loop, it is long but very small in value and significantly decreasing every month.  I definitely don't want to close the account (it's only £1 to keep it running), it might become useful in future, you never know.

Ah right - fair enough if you actively want to keep it open. I'm a bit more cut-throat when it comes to closing savings accounts, unless there's a likely chance it definitely will become competitive in the future. Keeping the odd one going with a minimal balance can be a good way of remaining a customer too, which obviously makes opening future accounts that bit easier.

allegro120

refluxer said:

allegro120 said:

refluxer said:

Better to request account closure (if you intend to empty the account) instead of requesting a withdrawal of the current balance, otherwise you'll get caught in that (almost) endless interest loop

I don't mind the interest loop, it is long but very small in value and significantly decreasing every month.  I definitely don't want to close the account (it's only £1 to keep it running), it might become useful in future, you never know.

Ah right - fair enough if you actively want to keep it open. I'm a bit more cut-throat when it comes to closing savings accounts, unless there's a likely chance it definitely will become competitive in the future. Keeping the odd one going with a minimal balance can be a good way of remaining a customer too, which obviously makes opening future accounts that bit easier.

It's all down to individual preferences.  I used to close accounts when they stopped being competitive, but within the past 3 years I gradually changed my strategy and now keep all accounts opened unless they require a larger minimum at very low rate in order to keep them running.  I find this strategy more efficient than closing accounts. One reason is that you've mentioned - makes it easier to open new accounts with the institution. The other - they can become NLA and I'll have no option to open them again if they become competitive.  I currently have 129 accounts (this doesn't include dormant accounts that banks create at the end of RS terms). Many of them have £1 or £0 balance.  It may sound too many, but these spare accounts don't take much time or energy to manage as they don't require any maintenance. 

gwapenut

I agree with your logic, but I now have in mind that I don't want to have too much of a mess to trawl through if I drop dead tomorrow! Hopefully I'm a long way off that, but it did cross my mind when COVID first kicked off.

I used to have accounts everywhere for carpet bagging, then for loyalty accounts, then for ease of id when changing address. But now I'm tending towards simplicity.

Bridlington1

gwapenut said:

I agree with your logic, but I now have in mind that I don't want to have too much of a mess to trawl through if I drop dead tomorrow! Hopefully I'm a long way off that, but it did cross my mind when COVID first kicked off.

I used to have accounts everywhere for carpet bagging, then for loyalty accounts, then for ease of id when changing address. But now I'm tending towards simplicity.

I can see your logic regarding keeping things simple for when the inevitable happens. I'm still quite young so I'm hoping I've still got a fair while left in me yet.

I typically lean more towards @allegro120's approach however, wanting to keep accounts in case they become competitive again and/or to maintain membership of building societies without much care for simplicity, though I'm also mindful of the fact that accounts sat with the minimum balance have a small cost associated with them in terms of lost interest, which individually don't amount to much but if you've got several dozen accounts with minimum balances those few pence in lost interest here and there start to add up and potentially eat into some of the gains of opening/keeping accounts speculatively in the first place. 

I focus more on freeing up funds for higher paying accounts by reducing unnecessary duplication, weeding out the accounts that will probably never become competitive again and general fine tuning. E.g. I once opened a Melton EA account with £25 a while back to gain membership, I later opened their regular saver issue 4 for the interest rate, which has no minimum balance so I closed the EA account as the regular saver can now serve the purpose that the EA account was originally intended for and doing so frees up £25 from an account paying 1.5% that can be moved elsewhere.

Paragon seem to have a habit of launching triple access accounts that are quite competitive then letting the rate lag behind newer issues so I've kept the most recent of these to maintain online access and closed the rest. I opened the Cambridge Your Saver to gain membership for future loyalty products a couple of years back, I then later converted the account into a First account as the account has a minimum balance of £1 rather than £100 but still preserves membership. The list goes on.

allegro120

Bridlington1 said:

gwapenut said:

I agree with your logic, but I now have in mind that I don't want to have too much of a mess to trawl through if I drop dead tomorrow! Hopefully I'm a long way off that, but it did cross my mind when COVID first kicked off.

I used to have accounts everywhere for carpet bagging, then for loyalty accounts, then for ease of id when changing address. But now I'm tending towards simplicity.

I can see your logic regarding keeping things simple for when the inevitable happens. I'm still quite young so I'm hoping I've still got a fair while left in me yet.

I typically lean more towards @allegro120's approach however, wanting to keep accounts in case they become competitive again and/or to maintain membership of building societies without much care for simplicity, though I'm also mindful of the fact that accounts sat with the minimum balance have a small cost associated with them in terms of lost interest, which individually don't amount to much but if you've got several dozen accounts with minimum balances those few pence in lost interest here and there start to add up and potentially eat into some of the gains of opening/keeping accounts speculatively in the first place. 

With regards to costs.  They are literary minimal.  Looking at my accounts that I keep for strategical reasons with £1 balance.  They are still paying reasonably decent rates, so for the convenience of having 20 accounts with £1 balance on each at the average rate 0.5% lower than you can get elsewhere you will be loosing about 10p AER.  Obviously depends on what accounts and how many, but the cost for 20-30 accounts shouldn't be more than 50p AER.

Bridlington1

allegro120 said:

Bridlington1 said:

gwapenut said:

I agree with your logic, but I now have in mind that I don't want to have too much of a mess to trawl through if I drop dead tomorrow! Hopefully I'm a long way off that, but it did cross my mind when COVID first kicked off.

I used to have accounts everywhere for carpet bagging, then for loyalty accounts, then for ease of id when changing address. But now I'm tending towards simplicity.

I can see your logic regarding keeping things simple for when the inevitable happens. I'm still quite young so I'm hoping I've still got a fair while left in me yet.

I typically lean more towards @allegro120's approach however, wanting to keep accounts in case they become competitive again and/or to maintain membership of building societies without much care for simplicity, though I'm also mindful of the fact that accounts sat with the minimum balance have a small cost associated with them in terms of lost interest, which individually don't amount to much but if you've got several dozen accounts with minimum balances those few pence in lost interest here and there start to add up and potentially eat into some of the gains of opening/keeping accounts speculatively in the first place. 

With regards to costs.  They are literary minimal.  Looking at my accounts that I keep for strategical reasons with £1 balance.  They are still paying reasonably decent rates, so for the convenience of having 20 accounts with £1 balance on each at the average rate 0.5% lower than you can get elsewhere you will be loosing about 10p AER.  Obviously depends on what accounts and how many, but the cost for 20-30 accounts shouldn't be more than 50p AER.

I'd agree the costs are very much minimal, though I still take it into account when organising my financial affairs. I was more arguing though that sometimes you can afford to be selective with which accounts you keep, particularly as they do tend to breed and at the extreme end can deprive you of some funds for better paying accounts. Plus occasionally it can be useful to ``fine tune" some of your accounts. Like you say though it depends on which accounts you have and on what scale.

I've still kept all the ones that serve a specific purpose such as maintaining membership for ease of applying for future products/loyalty perks, accounts that I'm keeping because I think they might become competitive later, DD purposes etc and I'm still left with over 100 savings accounts (most of which are on minimum balances).

There are some accounts I had which are very unlikely to ever become competitive or were set up for a specific purpose but I have since opened another account that will do the same job. In these instances the funds can probably be better deployed elsewhere.

I found I had a lot of instances when I've opened an account with a building society to gain membership but then opened another account with them for the rate whose balance can be reduced to £1 or less later on so can be used to keep membership instead (as I mentioned with Melton BS but was also the case with MBS, Skipton etc). In this case the original account is now redundant and can be closed with the funds being of more use to me elsewhere. 

janusdesign

SirHugo said:

janusdesign said:

SirHugo said:

Received a letter today from Dudley Building Society informing me that the interest rate on their 60 Day Notice Online account is decreasing from 5.40% to 4.35%.
This change takes effect from 3rd May 2024. There are no penalties for any withdrawals within 30 days of the date of the letter (the 17th April). 

I had already given notice on an amount that I withdrew today, so will be closing the account entirely now.
Moving my money to my Oxbury 90 day notice account at 5.51%. Just hope this doesn't start dropping now too.

got a similar letter - their 90-Day will go from 5.35% to 4.40% on the above date... that appears to be their top rate of all of their accounts.

it might have been nice to throw a small amount into an EA account to keep the online account alive, but £50 @ 2.45% doesn't appeal to me... they have a 4.40% RS that you don't need to pay into every month, so will have to check back to see if it was originally a hassle to open my first Dudley Account - that was back 2 years ago when they had their 4.75% 1-yr fix which I seem to remember was a leading rate then (but would only accept one deposit!).

Yes, I also would like to keep my online account alive but personally there are no savings accounts now worth bothering with. I joined them in July last year when I opened a 90 day notice account.

Maybe there's a possibility that the online portal stays open even without any live accounts? I might query it with them when I close my 60 Day account through secure messaging.

let us know what their reply is - I would be interested to know... they tend to take a few days to reply to messages, so will hang fire for a while before closing.