The Old Regular Savers Discussion Thread 28/12/24-29/1/26

soulsaver

Just watch out for Chorley BS maturity process on their RSs.

Goes to an EA maturity account. Tried to withdraw all the funds in there Friday.

Their system tells you that the w/d request has been submitted and they'll be in touch.

Took them until Monday morning to tell they've rejected the transaction as it would take the balance below the min of £25. I should use the 'close account' option to w/d all the balance.

So miffed, I do. "..the w/d request has been submitted and they'll be in touch." Again.

Still no sign of the money - only 4 days later......

Yes I know there's a w.e... it's in the terms (probably)... Great customer experience? 

Bigwheels1111

Pompeydave1967 said:

Opened a zopa last month and got the 4.75% a/c and thought I’d grab the RS @ 7.1%. I’m usually a longer fixer with my money 1 , 2 , 5 year but wanted to grab the RS at that rate. Looking on a calculator tonight I think I’ll get £141 interest after 12 months whereas if I had fixed £3600 over 1 year even at 4% I’d get £144 or more if compound a/c .What’s peoples views on these RS’s ? I see many have 20,30,40+ a/c’s and must take a huge amount of time to monitor them - wouldn't it be easier to just put larger amounts in a 1 year fix ? 

You are not understanding how Reg savers work.
I leave the funds for my 22 regular savers in an easy access isa at 3.85% tax free.
Then on the 31st, or just after 00.01am I move the 5k I need to fund them into my bank.
So I get 3.85% and 5.5% to 7.5% on the reg savers.
So much more than 4.75%.
I need 60k this year to fund them all.
I don’t have that much but some mature every month, they get reinvested and so on.
The reg savers are on Standing Orders.
Each one takes around 5 or 10 mins to open, fund and set up SO.
Thats it for a year.

Bridlington1

Pompeydave1967 said:

Opened a zopa last month and got the 4.75% a/c and thought I’d grab the RS @ 7.1%. I’m usually a longer fixer with my money 1 , 2 , 5 year but wanted to grab the RS at that rate. Looking on a calculator tonight I think I’ll get £141 interest after 12 months whereas if I had fixed £3600 over 1 year even at 4% I’d get £144 or more if compound a/c .What’s peoples views on these RS’s ? I see many have 20,30,40+ a/c’s and must take a huge amount of time to monitor them - wouldn't it be easier to just put larger amounts in a 1 year fix ? 

What you're missing is that in your calculations you're assuming that if the money isn't in regular savers it's earning no interest. In practice many will stick their money in an EA account and then drip-feed the funds into regular savers.

In the case of Zopa's 7.1% RS, if you had £3.6k in an EA account at, say, 4.5% and you drip-fed the funds into Zopa at 7.1% at a rate of £300/mth you'd earn roughly £138.45 on the regular saver, but you'd also earn roughly £74.25 on the money whilst it's in the EA account, leaving you with roughly £212.70 overall.

When you've enough regular savers you can easily end up in a position where the money that's being paid into regular savers is coming exclusively from other regular savers, making these figures rise further.

There's also MSE's regular savers calculator if you want to have a play around with some figures:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/regular-savings-calculator/

surreysaver

Pompeydave1967 said:

Opened a zopa last month and got the 4.75% a/c and thought I’d grab the RS @ 7.1%. I’m usually a longer fixer with my money 1 , 2 , 5 year but wanted to grab the RS at that rate. Looking on a calculator tonight I think I’ll get £141 interest after 12 months whereas if I had fixed £3600 over 1 year even at 4% I’d get £144 or more if compound a/c .What’s peoples views on these RS’s ? I see many have 20,30,40+ a/c’s and must take a huge amount of time to monitor them - wouldn't it be easier to just put larger amounts in a 1 year fix ? 

The £3,600 isn't in the account for a year. You get 7.1% on the money in the account. On average, over the course of the year, you have about half of £3,600 in the account. The other half will be somewhere else earning interest.
If you can be bothered with a little faff, you will earn a lot more money than just leaving it in an account paying ~4%

Bridlington1

soulsaver said:

Just watch out for Chorley BS maturity process on their RSs.

Goes to an EA maturity account. Tried to withdraw all the funds in there Friday.

Their system tells you that the w/d request has been submitted and they'll be in touch.

Took them until Monday morning to tell they've rejected the transaction as it would take the balance below the min of £25. I should use the 'close account' option to w/d all the balance.

So miffed, I do. "..the w/d request has been submitted and they'll be in touch." Again.

Still no sign of the money - only 4 days later......

Yes I know there's a w.e... it's in the terms (probably)... Great customer experience? 

For balance I recently closed my Chorley BS RS early (on Thursday last week) using the close account option, a few hours later they said they'd processed it and the funds would be in my nominated account the next working day. Funds arrived in my nominated account on the Friday.

For now I've retained a notice account with £1 to keep their online portal alive in case it comes in handy in the future.

Ch1ll1Phlakes

Pompeydave1967 said:

Opened a zopa last month and got the 4.75% a/c and thought I’d grab the RS @ 7.1%. I’m usually a longer fixer with my money 1 , 2 , 5 year but wanted to grab the RS at that rate. Looking on a calculator tonight I think I’ll get £141 interest after 12 months whereas if I had fixed £3600 over 1 year even at 4% I’d get £144 or more if compound a/c .What’s peoples views on these RS’s ? I see many have 20,30,40+ a/c’s and must take a huge amount of time to monitor them - wouldn't it be easier to just put larger amounts in a 1 year fix ? 

Have a read through the prior comments. Very simply the money being fed into the Regular Saver, should be sitting in an easy access account before being transferred to the higher rate. Using your example above with a 4% EA and 7.1% RS at £300pm (the calculator treats interest and fixed so an EA and fix at 4% are equivalent), we get the following results from the MSE calculator as noted by @Bridlington1


On it's own, yes, the regular saver would be out performed by a 4% fixed/EA account over one year (i.e £137<£142) but the funds can be held in an EA account until they are needed by the Regular Saver. Opening the RS along side an EA at 4% would give £61 more than the EA alone.

Pompeydave1967

Bigwheels1111 said:

Pompeydave1967 said:

Opened a zopa last month and got the 4.75% a/c and thought I’d grab the RS @ 7.1%. I’m usually a longer fixer with my money 1 , 2 , 5 year but wanted to grab the RS at that rate. Looking on a calculator tonight I think I’ll get £141 interest after 12 months whereas if I had fixed £3600 over 1 year even at 4% I’d get £144 or more if compound a/c .What’s peoples views on these RS’s ? I see many have 20,30,40+ a/c’s and must take a huge amount of time to monitor them - wouldn't it be easier to just put larger amounts in a 1 year fix ? 

You are not understanding how Reg savers work.
I leave the funds for my 22 regular savers in an easy access isa at 3.85% tax free.
Then on the 31st, or just after 00.01am I move the 5k I need to fund them into my bank.
So I get 3.85% and 5.5% to 7.5% on the reg savers.
So much more than 4.75%.
I need 60k this year to fund them all.
I don’t have that much but some mature every month, they get reinvested and so on.
The reg savers are on Standing Orders.
Each one takes around 5 or 10 mins to open, fund and set up SO.
Thats it for a year.

Thanks bigwheels for the explanation , I was just going on figures from a maturing fix that goes into an ea then gets fixed for another year immediately. As always I appreciate your reply as I know you have fixes as well (mentioned on the fixed thread) .You seem to have this off to a tee bigwheels , I’ll look into a bit more , cheers 

Pompeydave1967

Bridlington1 said:

Pompeydave1967 said:

Opened a zopa last month and got the 4.75% a/c and thought I’d grab the RS @ 7.1%. I’m usually a longer fixer with my money 1 , 2 , 5 year but wanted to grab the RS at that rate. Looking on a calculator tonight I think I’ll get £141 interest after 12 months whereas if I had fixed £3600 over 1 year even at 4% I’d get £144 or more if compound a/c .What’s peoples views on these RS’s ? I see many have 20,30,40+ a/c’s and must take a huge amount of time to monitor them - wouldn't it be easier to just put larger amounts in a 1 year fix ? 

What you're missing is that in your calculations you're assuming that if the money isn't in regular savers it's earning no interest. In practice many will stick their money in an EA account and then drip-feed the funds into regular savers.

In the case of Zopa's 7.1% RS, if you had £3.6k in an EA account at, say, 4.5% and you drip-fed the funds into Zopa at 7.1% at a rate of £300/mth you'd earn roughly £138.45 on the regular saver, but you'd also earn roughly £74.25 on the money whilst it's in the EA account, leaving you with roughly £212.70 overall.

When you've enough regular savers you can easily end up in a position where the money that's being paid into regular savers is coming exclusively from other regular savers, making these figures rise further.

There's also MSE's regular savers calculator if you want to have a play around with some figures:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/regular-savings-calculator/

Thanks Bridlington1 as always a very professional and informative reply. Yes based it on figures from a maturing fix that goes into a non interest earning ea then gets fixed up again. As said to bigwheels I’ll look into this a lot further .Would be interesting to hear your interest figures  earnt from RS’s compared to a standard fix over a year . Thanks again for explanation. 

Pompeydave1967

surreysaver said:

Pompeydave1967 said:

Opened a zopa last month and got the 4.75% a/c and thought I’d grab the RS @ 7.1%. I’m usually a longer fixer with my money 1 , 2 , 5 year but wanted to grab the RS at that rate. Looking on a calculator tonight I think I’ll get £141 interest after 12 months whereas if I had fixed £3600 over 1 year even at 4% I’d get £144 or more if compound a/c .What’s peoples views on these RS’s ? I see many have 20,30,40+ a/c’s and must take a huge amount of time to monitor them - wouldn't it be easier to just put larger amounts in a 1 year fix ? 

The £3,600 isn't in the account for a year. You get 7.1% on the money in the account. On average, over the course of the year, you have about half of £3,600 in the account. The other half will be somewhere else earning interest.
If you can be bothered with a little faff, you will earn a lot more money than just leaving it in an account paying ~4%

Thanks surreysaver all making a lot more sense now. As above I was basing it on a maturing fix getting reinvested for a year rather than into a ea then drip feeding into RS. Lots to look into but I guess a bit of fun too.

Pompeydave1967

Ch1ll1Phlakes said:

Pompeydave1967 said:

Opened a zopa last month and got the 4.75% a/c and thought I’d grab the RS @ 7.1%. I’m usually a longer fixer with my money 1 , 2 , 5 year but wanted to grab the RS at that rate. Looking on a calculator tonight I think I’ll get £141 interest after 12 months whereas if I had fixed £3600 over 1 year even at 4% I’d get £144 or more if compound a/c .What’s peoples views on these RS’s ? I see many have 20,30,40+ a/c’s and must take a huge amount of time to monitor them - wouldn't it be easier to just put larger amounts in a 1 year fix ? 

Have a read through the prior comments. Very simply the money being fed into the Regular Saver, should be sitting in an easy access account before being transferred to the higher rate. Using your example above with a 4% EA and 7.1% RS at £300pm (the calculator treats interest and fixed so an EA and fix at 4% are equivalent), we get the following results from the MSE calculator as noted by @Bridlington1


On it's own, yes, the regular saver would be out performed by a 4% fixed/EA account over one year (i.e £137<£142) but the funds can be held in an EA account until they are needed by the Regular Saver. Opening the RS along side an EA at 4% would give £61 more than the EA alone.

Thanks very much for replying , all makes a lot more sense now. I guess the more RS’s open the more juggling around with ££ .All sounds interesting.