Santander Edge £36 for new customers

where_are_we

Yes! If you are not going for the Santander offer go for £5 spend at topgiftcards - various retail outlets - Asda is my choice!

moneyworrier2021

So I've opened up this Santander account in order to switch out after the £36 has been paid but if I do, is it likely to decline my Topcashback which is quoting 12 weeks or more for payout?

Nasqueron

moneyworrier2021 said:

So I've opened up this Santander account in order to switch out after the £36 has been paid but if I do, is it likely to decline my Topcashback which is quoting 12 weeks or more for payout?

TCB tends to start quoting 12 weeks then it goes up or down depending. Is there any reason to close or switch it vs using another account for a switch bonus?

Casper7

Just wondering, with these offers coming on and off and people start moving from here to there. It seems you will eventually end up with lots of accounts. I like the idea but I see it hard to manage monies scattered around.

Bridlington1

Casper7 said:

Just wondering, with these offers coming on and off and people start moving from here to there. It seems you will eventually end up with lots of accounts. I like the idea but I see it hard to manage monies scattered around.

I've got the bulk of my savings spread between over 30 accounts (mostly regular savers), with about 100 more accounts on minimum balances for various reasons.

I've found a spreadsheet is very helpful when it comes to organising everything, I list all accounts with interest rate, balance and next interest payment on one sheet, this list is copied, pasted and updated each month to give a snapshot of my accounts.

All regular savers are listed in another sheet with min/max deposits, maturity dates, number of withdrawals permitted on another sheet (mainly so I know which I've paid in to and which ones I should fund). Nominated accounts are listed on another sheet etc. 

I can't say I have any difficulties managing my savings with it being spread around. A lot of accounts are just left with a minimum balance anyway so are just listed and ignored on a spreadsheet.

Most of the time if you've got more than the minimum balance in an account you're probably not going to be dipping into it much and for most regular savers they're just a case of bung £x in at the start of the month, update balance on the spreadsheet and ignore. Others e.g. Santander Edge Saver, you may max it out and then not dip into it so it's just a case of skimming the interest off each month, the £4k balance remains constant on the spreadsheet.

Casper7

Bridlington1 said:

Casper7 said:

Just wondering, with these offers coming on and off and people start moving from here to there. It seems you will eventually end up with lots of accounts. I like the idea but I see it hard to manage monies scattered around.

I've got the bulk of my savings spread between over 30 accounts (mostly regular savers), with about 100 more accounts on minimum balances for various reasons.

I've found a spreadsheet is very helpful when it comes to organising everything, I list all accounts with interest rate, balance and next interest payment on one sheet, this list is copied, pasted and updated each month to give a snapshot of my accounts.

All regular savers are listed in another sheet with min/max deposits, maturity dates, number of withdrawals permitted on another sheet (mainly so I know which I've paid in to and which ones I should fund). Nominated accounts are listed on another sheet etc. 

I can't say I have any difficulties managing my savings with it being spread around. A lot of accounts are just left with a minimum balance anyway so are just listed and ignored on a spreadsheet.

Most of the time if you've got more than the minimum balance in an account you're probably not going to be dipping into it much and for most regular savers they're just a case of bung £x in at the start of the month, update balance on the spreadsheet and ignore. Others e.g. Santander Edge Saver, you may max it out and then not dip into it so it's just a case of skimming the interest off each month, the £4k balance remains constant on the spreadsheet.

Well done... you are so organised.

friolento

Casper7 said:

Just wondering, with these offers coming on and off and people start moving from here to there. It seems you will eventually end up with lots of accounts. I like the idea but I see it hard to manage monies scattered around.

You can record the accounts you have in a simple spreadsheet. You also don't need to keep any money in current accounts, so you can let them sit at a £0 balance. Better than that, if you are patient, you can CASS switch them to close them, and often get a bonus payment in the process.

ircE

As I recall, it's possible to avoid having to pay the monthly fee on the account so you can pocket the £36... but holding an Edge account makes you eligible for the Edge credit card, which also has a monthly fee of £3, and offers 2% cashback for the first year.

So is it possible to open an Edge account with this offer, use the money to fund a year's worth of the Edge credit card to exploit the 2% cashback credit card, and then cancel the card (unless you want to continue paying £3pm for 1% ongoing cashback)? Have I missed anything?

Casper7

friolento said:

Casper7 said:

Just wondering, with these offers coming on and off and people start moving from here to there. It seems you will eventually end up with lots of accounts. I like the idea but I see it hard to manage monies scattered around.

You can record the accounts you have in a simple spreadsheet. You also don't need to keep any money in current accounts, so you can let them sit at a £0 balance. Better than that, if you are patient, you can CASS switch them to close them, and often get a bonus payment in the process.

Any idea of ready made spreadsheet for this purpose?

Bridlington1 can suggests one to download?

My way is I open a word document and create a table. First column is the name of the account and the bank, second is the amount of money in, and notes column to explain why I opened this account and the goal to achieve and when I should move to another bank.

But not sure if this will work or enough if I go serious into playing this bank accounts game! 

Bridlington1

Casper7 said:

friolento said:

Casper7 said:

Just wondering, with these offers coming on and off and people start moving from here to there. It seems you will eventually end up with lots of accounts. I like the idea but I see it hard to manage monies scattered around.

You can record the accounts you have in a simple spreadsheet. You also don't need to keep any money in current accounts, so you can let them sit at a £0 balance. Better than that, if you are patient, you can CASS switch them to close them, and often get a bonus payment in the process.

Any idea of ready made spreadsheet for this purpose?

Bridlington1 can suggests one to download?

My way is I open a word document and create a table. First column is the name of the account and the bank, second is the amount of money in, and notes column to explain why I opened this account and the goal to achieve and when I should move to another bank.

But not sure if this will work or enough if I go serious into playing this bank accounts game! 

A spreadsheet would probably be better than a word document for this, purely because once you've got a lot of accounts it's useful to be able to perform calculations automatically rather than manually adding things up. If you've got 100 accounts, each with at least 1p in them, and you want to know how much you have between the accounts, in word you've got to manually add the balances up (which is more prone to human error if adding lots of numbers and time consuming), in a spreadsheet you can just type, say, =SUM(E3:E103) and it will do this calculation automatically in less than a second.

I just started off by listing all my accounts on a spreadsheet (in a similar way to what you've already done with the word document) and then built it up from there, recording whatever I thought was useful. I never bothered with a ready made spreadsheet.

I've uploaded a blanked version of the one I've ended up with onto a OneDrive if it's any use. Feel free to download and adapt it however you wish. It was created in OpenOffice so there could be some compatibility issues if opening in Microsoft Excel (you should be able to view it on a OneDrive without issues though)

https://1drv.ms/x/s!AlUKILxMFAjta57sjPncOD2q0wo?e=cZM0MT

You can then budget however you wish from there, personally I'd say the easiest way to do this is to treat your savings accounts as one item for budgeting purposes and divide things up on a separate sheet on the spreadsheet from there, though approaches inevitably will vary.