Christmas Saving accounts 2025

cricidmuslibale

Bridlington1 said:

» show previous quotes

In addition to the above this account allows 1 withdrawal day per year plus closure as the previous Christmas 2024 RS did.

Apologies, I was rather short of time when I posted that (partly due to a poor internet connection) so forgot to add in that detail.

I am tbh quite surprised by how low (relatively speaking) the variable interest rate on this forthcoming YBS Christmas regular saver is going to be! I was genuinely expecting - with pretty good reasons for this, given YBS's recent track record for usually fairly generous regular saver interest rates compared to those of other regular savers available at the same time during the last 5 years or so - the interest rate to be c. 5.50% (+-0.25%). The interest rate was always going to be variable, that's no surprise at all, because even YBS's most generous regular savers in interest rate terms recently have all had variable interest rates. Given that and the current expectation that the Bank of England will have cut the Base Rate by 0.25% at least once, perhaps as many as three times by October 31, it is possible that this 5% variable interest rate will have been reduced to c. 4.25% for a significant amount of time before this Christmas regular saver matures. That prospect alone makes this particular Christmas regular saver simply not worth it overall, for me at least.

I very much hope that this particular regular saver is not the start of a new savings strategy by the YBS savings team of only issuing regular savers with 'middling' interest rates from now onwards! By 'middling' I mean interest rates that are nowhere near competitive in comparison with relatively similar regular savers from other building societies of similar size - e.g. Coventry BS with their Loyalty Seasonal Saver at 6% variable, Principality Christmas Regular Saver at 7% fixed - whilst not being so low as to be derisory and completely unappealing!

(Although the Coventry Seasonal Saver is a loyalty account rather than one available to all its savers, in practice the vast majority of Coventry savers are likely to have had a continuous saving or mortgage relationship with Coventry BS (or Godiva etc.) since 1 January 2024, so it's not a difficult regular saver to qualify for really. Thus I think it is entirely fair to refer to it in the comparison above.)