Changing savings account

RG2015

In recent years I have been chasing the best easy access savings rates. Market leading rates at Marcus, Chase, Virgin Money and others have now been overtaken. Similarly, I have regular savers which have rates double those of easy access accounts, but only gain me a few pounds a year.

I am getting weary of the constant changing for a couple of pounds a month. Equally I have stopped moving surplus cash for a few days to earn a few pennies in extra interest.

I am interested to hear what others do. Would you ignore making a change that would only yield a couple of pounds per month?

wiseonesomeofthetime

Yes. I am in your court now.

Some may now no longer call us Money Saving Experts (lol), however, trying to keep track of it all, and put up with the now constant AML check delays when transferring sums to "new" accounts, has become exhausting tbh.

I still tinker, but not for 0.1% any more.

Stubod

..gave up "chasing rates" ages ago, but looking a little closer now that rates are on the up...

TheWoodler

My pragmatic view is that it’s *work* - even if it takes minutes or seconds to deal with. I keep a spreadsheet of interest as a record for HMRC purposes, so that’s maintenance work. The work then starts to stack up. 

If the work doesn’t remunerate you well enough, then it’s not worth it. 

For the same reason, while I try and snap up good deals, the value of the time spent in research (which is ‘work’ again) has to be justified in the return. A savings ladder with products maturing each month is probably the right ‘work’/life balance for me personally. Keeps it fresh and interesting without any one being a deal-breaker.

It’s been worth reading this forum, as I’ve learnt which providers are reported as high or low maintenance, so I’ve minimised the work. If they offer brilliant customer service, then that’s less work. Saffron, for example, is superb. 

Being deaf, there are other factors at play. I don’t want to go for accounts where customer service is phone-dependent in updating accounts or sorting problems out (looking at you, NS&I) - something that is minutes for a hearing person can be excruciatingly prolonged for me. That’s ‘work’ for which I’m not remunerated in the savings rate.

So I prioritise accessible providers, which ensures I get the best return for the time spent managing accounts. So yes, I take a very similar approach to you OP. 

Albermarle

It is like the law of diminishing returns.

Compared to many new posters ( and probably a majority of people with savings who are sitting with lots of cash in current accounts/high st bank savings accounts), then you can massively improve your returns/interest by maybe just having two or three savings accounts with better paying institutions, and reviewing them say every 6 months. So very little time spent for a good gain.
To gain another say 0.4% interest on top, probably means opening and closing  numerous accounts every few weeks.
To gain say another 0.2% interest on top of that, probably means spending some time nearly every day and like the OP getting stressed with the hassle/admin, just to gain a few quid. Pretty much like having a very low paid job !
Personally I think it is MSE, not to do a lot of work for little reward. I would say the same about opening new S&S ISA's just to get a £25 cashback that often needs chasing up with phone calls , e mails etc  .

Malchester

RG2015 said:

In recent years I have been chasing the best easy access savings rates. Market leading rates at Marcus, Chase, Virgin Money and others have now been overtaken. Similarly, I have regular savers which have rates double those of easy access accounts, but only gain me a few pounds a year.

I am getting weary of the constant changing for a couple of pounds a month. Equally I have stopped moving surplus cash for a few days to earn a few pennies in extra interest.

I am interested to hear what others do. Would you ignore making a change that would only yield a couple of pounds per month?

The same here. Stopped chasing rates. Now have just Gatehouse and Zopa and it will take a lot for me to move now.

jimexbox

I jumped from chase to the zopa, who so far have remained competative. Not the highest, granted, but I like the choice of boosted pots.

I found about the starting saving rate on this board. So l make full use of my partners allowance. 

Daliah

I don't have an awful lot of cash to move around but I keep moving it when there is a significant difference in interest / expected profit rate as I am not minded to support laggard providers. For example, I jumped on the Chase 1.5% when it was the best deal by miles, and I left Chase after a couple of months as I could get 1.7% at Virgin. That didn't last long, either, as I then moved to Al Rayan which was 1.9% at the time and is now 2.1%. I also closed done half a dozen 1.75% Regular Savers and put them all into a 2.29% notice account. I didn't consider any of the moves onerous, and I plan to continue chasing rates and caring about the odd £10 or £20. Keeping track of all the accounts and movements is a doddle for me, as I just update my personal finance manager (AceMoney) as required.