1.65% three year fix

Bridlington1

I was fortunate in that I threw my money into regular savers as savings rates rose instead of fixes so could access my savings early and without penalty in nearly all cases. However I've made a fair few other expensive banking blunders over the last couple of years:

Firstly hoovering up the switching offers a bit too early:

In 2022 I got £125 from Halifax and Lloyds, if I'd waited 6-8 months I could've got £175 and £200 respectively.

RBS I only got £150 out of in April 2022, if I'd waited a year it would've been £200.

Santander £160 in August 2022, if I'd waited a fortnight I could've got £175, if I'd held off till January 2023 I'd've got £200.

Nationwide £125 in March 2022, if I'd waited till October I could've got £200.


Secondly I've pushed some of the banks too far and got lifetime bans or been barred from opening new accounts as a result:

I got a lifetime ban from Barclays in November 2022 within a few weeks of opening my first account with them, preventing me from getting their £175 switching offer a year later.

I opened 5 TSB current accounts in a day in August 2022, all of which were swiftly closed and they've not let me open another account since, 2 months later they launched a £180 switching offer that required you to open a new TSB account with, which I was eligible for. I've also been unable to open new savings accounts with them so can't get hold of their 6% regular saver.

The biggest blunder of them all is probably my LBG lifetime ban, preventing me from getting £15/mth out of the Halifax reward accounts, the Club Lloyds lifestyle benefits and 4 regular savers which would've been useful to have, not to mention any switching offers they may offer in the future. Already I'm over £250 worse off for the lifetime ban and counting.

And then on top of all that last month I finally found someone to refer to Zing for £20. This month they've gone and upped the RAF offer to £30.

Edited to add:
I got a lifetime ban from Metro in August 2023 (I still don't know why), with the account closing just before they launched a 5.22% EA account.

t1redmonkey

My first experience of holding shares was when Bradford & Bingley demutualized, so I got free shares from that which I think were worth around £1k at one point, but I kept hold of them.  Those became worthless when B&B got nationalised.  Oh well, easy come, easy go!

wmb194

t1redmonkey said:

My first experience of holding shares was when Bradford & Bingley demutualized, so I got free shares from that which I think were worth around £1k at one point, but I kept hold of them.  Those became worthless when B&B got nationalised.  Oh well, easy come, easy go!

You’ll have received some good dividends along the way, though.

Ocelot

[Deleted User] said:

simonsmithsays said:

Credit to you for your honesty.

In a sea of 'look at me' it's a refreshing change.

👏 

PS mine was Leeds Utd shares.  Bought only days before they went into administration 

Good old Chinny Ridsdale.

Yes, bankrupting clubs since 2004.

UKX69

Hoenir said:

How many employees of Northern Rock held shares in their own company. At the stroke of a pen. The business nationalised. The shares being worthless. 

At least you haven't lost any money. Your capital remains intact. 

Just a little sub comment on that. I bank with NatWest and just after the near collapse of RBS, I was talking to a member of staff and she confided in me that the RBS staff share scheme was her means of putting her children through university. With the collapse of share price and cancellation of dividends that went out of the window. On the other hand, my company share scheme paid off my mortgage. I count myself extremely fortunate.

UKX69

Bridlington1 said:

I was fortunate in that I threw my money into regular savers as savings rates rose instead of fixes so could access my savings early and without penalty in nearly all cases. However I've made a fair few other expensive banking blunders over the last couple of years:

Firstly hoovering up the switching offers a bit too early:

In 2022 I got £125 from Halifax and Lloyds, if I'd waited 6-8 months I could've got £175 and £200 respectively.

RBS I only got £150 out of in April 2022, if I'd waited a year it would've been £200.

Santander £160 in August 2022, if I'd waited a fortnight I could've got £175, if I'd held off till January 2023 I'd've got £200.

Nationwide £125 in March 2022, if I'd waited till October I could've got £200.


Secondly I've pushed some of the banks too far and got lifetime bans or been barred from opening new accounts as a result:

I got a lifetime ban from Barclays in November 2022 within a few weeks of opening my first account with them, preventing me from getting their £175 switching offer a year later.

I opened 5 TSB current accounts in a day in August 2022, all of which were swiftly closed and they've not let me open another account since, 2 months later they launched a £180 switching offer that required you to open a new TSB account with, which I was eligible for. I've also been unable to open new savings accounts with them so can't get hold of their 6% regular saver.

The biggest blunder of them all is probably my LBG lifetime ban, preventing me from getting £15/mth out of the Halifax reward accounts, the Club Lloyds lifestyle benefits and 4 regular savers which would've been useful to have, not to mention any switching offers they may offer in the future. Already I'm over £250 worse off for the lifetime ban and counting.

And then on top of all that last month I finally found someone to refer to Zing for £20. This month they've gone and upped the RAF offer to £30.

Edited to add:
I got a lifetime ban from Metro in August 2023 (I still don't know why), with the account closing just before they launched a 5.22% EA account.

The old saying about hindsight. Don’t beat yourself up about it. If we had a crystal ball we’d all be rich!
I remember buying Orange (Telecoms) shares in the 1990’s simply because of speculation of a buyout floating around. Held them for about a year or so, but they just flatlined. I think I paid about £4 each. Anyway, no movement so I sold them and moved on. The following week, a company made an offer and they rocketed. 🤔

george4064

In 2021 I bought MusicMagpie shares as part of their IPO, around 200p per share. Since then, the share price drifted lower and lower down at about 4p a share recently. Last week AO swooped in with a takeover offer that made the shares jump 50% to around 9p, but I’m still down more than 95%!

I kept holding the shares to serve as a reminder that I shouldn’t buy single stocks, in particular small caps. I will miss the big fat red mark in my ISA when the takeover inevitably completes. For what it’s worth, I’ll be voting against the takeover.

VNX

All one can do is make a decision at a moment in time based on what is known/expected/gut feeling at the time 

then we look back as time rolls by and see how good or bad a decision is was. What we know now is not what we knew them.

Life.

UKX69

george4064 said:

In 2021 I bought MusicMagpie shares as part of their IPO, around 200p per share. Since then, the share price drifted lower and lower down at about 4p a share recently. Last week AO swooped in with a takeover offer that made the shares jump 50% to around 9p, but I’m still down more than 95%!

I kept holding the shares to serve as a reminder that I shouldn’t buy single stocks, in particular small caps. I will miss the big fat red mark in my ISA when the takeover inevitably completes. For what it’s worth, I’ll be voting against the takeover.

That’s the downside of buying single shares. It happened to me with BT, gradually and very slowly drifting down until I got so frustrated I took the hit and got out with at least some cash. I think that was about 25 years ago. On the upside, I bought into the London Stock Exchange themselves after a rebuffed approach by the German Stock Exchange. In those days I was buying paper share certificates and investing @ 5k a time to make it worth while. I had a feeling that the Germans would be back in a year or so time, and sure enough they did. I can’t remember the figures involved now but the LSE put up another fight and offered a special dividend of 50p on top of the normal dividend. With that and again the  increased price of the LSE, I walked away with a big profit and bought a new computer system.

Another one which was just luck was M&S shares. I just happened to be holding the stock when Phillip Green made a hostile approach and again walked away with a profit.

You pay your money and take your chance.

vacheron

DasTechniker said:

Hoenir said:

How many employees of Northern Rock held shares in their own company. At the stroke of a pen. The business nationalised. The shares being worthless. 

At least you haven't lost any money. Your capital remains intact. 

Just a little sub comment on that. I bank with NatWest and just after the near collapse of RBS, I was talking to a member of staff and she confided in me that the RBS staff share scheme was her means of putting her children through university. With the collapse of share price and cancellation of dividends that went out of the window. On the other hand, my company share scheme paid off my mortgage. I count myself extremely fortunate.

That reminded me of a friend I knew who worked for Northern Rock in the mid 2000's. He knew of a lady there in her 60's who had worked there for 30 years from when it was a much smaller building society. They had a very "family" based employee relationship with a very shares oriented culture granted when it de-mutualised, options to obtain discounted shares, company schemes, and bonuses often offered in shares. 

She had ploughed almost all of her savings in and had nearly 140K in shares at the time (around 2006-7) when it was at its peak of 1000-1100p, with little held elsewhere for her retirement. When NT collapsed, she lost it all, and her job too on top of that. Plus her husband worked for an NR supplier was also made redundant as a consequence.

As per your situation, I have shares from my share scheme which I purchased at £5.20 and are now trading at £21. I've sold enought to crystalise my original investment, but every day I question the decision to continue to hold such a large amount of eggs in one basket!