High interest accounts with direct debit or Standing Orders

rowan_bradley

My wife is going into a care home. I have sold various investments to generate enough cash to pay for the care home for a year or two. Now I need to be able to put this money somewhere where it will earn a decent amount of interest, and from where they can suck the money via direct debit. Most savings accounts seem to say no DDs or STOs. What is the best solution to this problem?

Thank you - Rowan

Brie

I thought that savings accounts were fine with STOs but not DDs.  

Hope you can get it sorted - the situation is stressful enough without the banks mucking you about!!

crumpet_man

Chase savings will pay direct debits but the internet rate is 3.75% compared to 5.15% with Trading 212 account which does not pay direct debits.

If you don't mind logging into an account once a month and transferring funds then you will be able to earn a higher rate of interest.

surreysaver

Brie said:

I thought that savings accounts were fine with STOs but not DDs.  

Not normally. There are one or two

rowan_bradley

I've opened a Chase Savings account, which seems to do exactly what I need (although I haven't actually set up a DD yet, and I can't see how to set up a STO). My IFA recommends putting a maximum of £85K in each bank, so I will need couple more. Are there any other accounts that pay a decent interest and allow direct debits?

Thank you - Rowan

Marcoos

rowan_bradley said:

I've opened a Chase Savings account, which seems to do exactly what I need (although I haven't actually set up a DD yet, and I can't see how to set up a STO). My IFA recommends putting a maximum of £85K in each bank, so I will need couple more. Are there any other accounts that pay a decent interest and allow direct debits?

Thank you - Rowan

Slightly off topic. But don't put the max £85k in, as you'll earn interest which will push you over the £85k FCFS protection.

friolento

rowan_bradley said:

I've opened a Chase Savings account, which seems to do exactly what I need (although I haven't actually set up a DD yet, and I can't see how to set up a STO). My IFA recommends putting a maximum of £85K in each bank, so I will need couple more. Are there any other accounts that pay a decent interest and allow direct debits?

Thank you - Rowan

The only other accounts that pay more than a mediocre interest rate and which allow DDs are the Starling and the Kroo current accounts.

You can find a complete collection of accounts on https://moneyfactscompare.co.uk/

eskbanker

rowan_bradley said:

I've opened a Chase Savings account, which seems to do exactly what I need (although I haven't actually set up a DD yet, and I can't see how to set up a STO). My IFA recommends putting a maximum of £85K in each bank, so I will need couple more. Are there any other accounts that pay a decent interest and allow direct debits?

Surely you'll only be setting one DD up for the care home fees, so you don't need multiple savings accounts to have that facility?  Just use the Chase one for that, and put the rest of the money into best-of-breed standard savings accounts without being constrained by DD availability, moving funds occasionally into Chase when the balance eventually drops too far.

TheBanker

crumpet_man said:

Chase savings will pay direct debits but the internet rate is 3.75% compared to 5.15% with Trading 212 account which does not pay direct debits.

If you don't mind logging into an account once a month and transferring funds then you will be able to earn a higher rate of interest.

Trading212 might not be the best option here. It's either a Cash ISA (so limited to £20k subscription per year, and only available if the person hasn't already used their allowance), or an investment account.

Although you can use the investment accoutn to hold cash which pays 5.15%, it's not the same as a bank account. In particular the FCSC protection is different because your funds can be held in QMFFs. If the OP does go down this route, they need to read the information carefully to understand the product that they are applying for, because it's not a savings account. 

rowan_bradley said:

My wife is going into a care home. I have sold various investments to generate enough cash to pay for the care home for a year or two. Now I need to be able to put this money somewhere where it will earn a decent amount of interest, and from where they can suck the money via direct debit. Most savings accounts seem to say no DDs or STOs. What is the best solution to this problem?

Thank you - Rowan

It might be worth putting some of the money that's not needed until the second year into a 12m fixed term deposit account. That would probably generate more interest.

rowan_bradley

eskbanker said:

rowan_bradley said:

I've opened a Chase Savings account, which seems to do exactly what I need (although I haven't actually set up a DD yet, and I can't see how to set up a STO). My IFA recommends putting a maximum of £85K in each bank, so I will need couple more. Are there any other accounts that pay a decent interest and allow direct debits?

Surely you'll only be setting one DD up for the care home fees, so you don't need multiple savings accounts to have that facility?  Just use the Chase one for that, and put the rest of the money into best-of-breed standard savings accounts without being constrained by DD availability, moving funds occasionally into Chase when the balance eventually drops too far.

I now realise that you are right. I ws trying to minimise the amount of monitoring that I had to do (because I can't be sure of the exact payments I need to make (the care home has all sorts of incidental expenses, like hair dressing etc.)) but I now see that I can't really avoid this.

Thank you - Rowan

rowan_bradley

Thanks for all the helpful advice. I have opened a Kroo account. It seems that Starling is no good because they only pay interest on balances of up to £5000. I think I now have a choice of solutions that are as good as they can be. Thank you again - a very helpful forum.
Rowan