The Top Regular Savers Discussion Thread

chris_the_bee

dcs34 said:

clairec666 said:

Bridlington1 said:

NatWest/RBS only state you must set up a SO but there's nothing I can see in the terms that state you must keep the SO or make deposits into the account by SO so you are free to cancel the SO if you wish and fund manually.

NatWest explicitly states that you must set up a standing order, specifically from your NatWest account. But you can cancel it and add money from elsewhere.

The regular savers which are a bit finickity when it comes to funding are HSBC, TSB and First Direct, where they force you to have a current account with them and set up a standing order from it. First Direct in particular is a pain because you have to contact them if you want to change your standing order. If it wasn't such a good rate I'd avoid them and stick with ones that are easier to manage!

I pay HSBC and TSB manually each month, albeit from the associated current account.

Only First Direct seem to actually enforce their "must pay in by standing order" rule.

I pay TSB from my NatWest account no problems. You need a TSB current account and have to set up a SO to begin with, but after the initial payment, you can cancel the SO and pay from anywhere.

clairec666

chris_the_bee said:

dcs34 said:

clairec666 said:

Bridlington1 said:

NatWest/RBS only state you must set up a SO but there's nothing I can see in the terms that state you must keep the SO or make deposits into the account by SO so you are free to cancel the SO if you wish and fund manually.

NatWest explicitly states that you must set up a standing order, specifically from your NatWest account. But you can cancel it and add money from elsewhere.

The regular savers which are a bit finickity when it comes to funding are HSBC, TSB and First Direct, where they force you to have a current account with them and set up a standing order from it. First Direct in particular is a pain because you have to contact them if you want to change your standing order. If it wasn't such a good rate I'd avoid them and stick with ones that are easier to manage!

I pay HSBC and TSB manually each month, albeit from the associated current account.

Only First Direct seem to actually enforce their "must pay in by standing order" rule.

I pay TSB from my NatWest account no problems. You need a TSB current account and have to set up a SO to begin with, but after the initial payment, you can cancel the SO and pay from anywhere.

Thanks for this info. It isn't obvious from TSB's T&Cs that you can do this.

Dizzycap

s71hj said:

Quick question, which I hope will be accepted as being relevant to this thread. It's about feeder accounts for regular savers, and I'm wondering how people manage that side of the whole undertaking. I have about 10000 go out to regular savers at the start of the month, 1st unless a weekend and maybe 4000 spread throughout the rest of a month. This is all by standing order from Santander current account. I'm conscious that the money, therefore, sits in that for a fair proportion of the month awaiting the start of the month earning 2.5%, generally growing to the required amount by maturing savings accounts of various kinds and salary. I'm beginning to wonder if all the advantage I gain from the regular saver boosted rates is lost by the amount of time money sits there waiting for the 1st. However, I don't have the bandwidth in my life for constantly daily monitoring and manual transfers. I think ideally, I need some sort of robo thing to move money from a higher paying saving account to current account as and when I need!!!!. Any ideas or tips about how others coordinate their affairs cost/time effectively on this front much appreciated!

I've set the vast majority of my SOs for RS to go on the 1st of the month, with the exception of 2 which can only be funded on the same day each month as when opened. I then build up funds along with matured RS funds through the month in a flexi instant access cash Isa; which I can replace as & when I want to, ready to load up my current account around 8pm the night before SO's are due to go out.

clairec666

Dizzycap said:

I've set the vast majority of my SOs for RS to go on the 1st of the month, with the exception of 2 which can only be funded on the same day each month as when opened. I then build up funds along with matured RS funds through the month in a flexi instant access cash Isa; which I can replace as & when I want to, ready to load up my current account around 8pm the night before SO's are due to go out.

I do the same. Until I found this forum, I though I was the only person who had so many regular savers and enjoys planning how to fund them!

Emily_Joy

s71hj said:

 Any ideas or tips about how others coordinate their affairs cost/time effectively on this front much appreciated!

1) move all SO to the 1st-5th of the month.

2) send all funds to a EA to wait

3) replenish the account at the end of the month in preparation for SO to be taken

I typically do all my banking early morning on Saturdays, when I make sure that the funds are ready for the week ahead and deal with all mail that accumulated during the week and (occasionally) matured RS. Sometimes I am not at home on a Saturday, in which case the mail gets to wait. 

s71hj

s71hj said:

Quick question, which I hope will be accepted as being relevant to this thread. It's about feeder accounts for regular savers, and I'm wondering how people manage that side of the whole undertaking. I have about 10000 go out to regular savers at the start of the month, 1st unless a weekend and maybe 4000 spread throughout the rest of a month. This is all by standing order from Santander current account. I'm conscious that the money, therefore, sits in that for a fair proportion of the month awaiting the start of the month earning 2.5%, generally growing to the required amount by maturing savings accounts of various kinds and salary. I'm beginning to wonder if all the advantage I gain from the regular saver boosted rates is lost by the amount of time money sits there waiting for the 1st. However, I don't have the bandwidth in my life for constantly daily monitoring and manual transfers. I think ideally, I need some sort of robo thing to move money from a higher paying saving account to current account as and when I need!!!!. Any ideas or tips about how others coordinate their affairs cost/time effectively on this front much appreciated!

Incidentally,  having recently interacted with another ?thread/board? On the MSE forum I wanted to comment on how friendly, helpful, tolerant of different level of knowledge this particular one is. It feels like everyone wants to share their knowledge and be helpful rather than scoff if someone asks what is perceived by others as a "silly question".

s71hj

s71hj said:

s71hj said:

Quick question, which I hope will be accepted as being relevant to this thread. It's about feeder accounts for regular savers, and I'm wondering how people manage that side of the whole undertaking. I have about 10000 go out to regular savers at the start of the month, 1st unless a weekend and maybe 4000 spread throughout the rest of a month. This is all by standing order from Santander current account. I'm conscious that the money, therefore, sits in that for a fair proportion of the month awaiting the start of the month earning 2.5%, generally growing to the required amount by maturing savings accounts of various kinds and salary. I'm beginning to wonder if all the advantage I gain from the regular saver boosted rates is lost by the amount of time money sits there waiting for the 1st. However, I don't have the bandwidth in my life for constantly daily monitoring and manual transfers. I think ideally, I need some sort of robo thing to move money from a higher paying saving account to current account as and when I need!!!!. Any ideas or tips about how others coordinate their affairs cost/time effectively on this front much appreciated!

Incidentally,  having recently interacted with another ?thread/board? On the MSE forum I wanted to comment on how friendly, helpful, tolerant of different level of knowledge this particular one is. It feels like everyone wants to share their knowledge and be helpful rather than scoff if someone asks what is perceived by others as a "silly question".

And special thanks I think to Bridlington1 who leads by example on this. Anyway much appreciated everyone's replies and I will amend my personal systems on the light of them!

WindfallWendy

Ooo, love this conversation!!! Though it reminds me that I still haven't been able to open a NatWest current account so am not benefiting from their RegSav. Gr.

I will however look into Chase. I hadn't thought about using an easy access saver to hold the cash before moving it into RegSav accounts.

My situation is that my husband holds the savings in an interest paying current account (Kroo) and has a SO passing into my own Kroo which then sends money to different current accounts and RS, usually within the first week of the month.

I do it this way so he doesn't earn more than £1000/year on interest, but that the funds still benefit from that tax free allowance. All the RS accounts are in my name and any taxable interest is mine to deal with. He can't be bothered playing the RS game and to be honest I think the funds I have are probably at their limit anyway (approx £25-30k circulating across 10-12 RS accounts). 

I hadn't thoughts of using an easy access saver to hold the funds in-between RS deposits. What a good idea!!
I love this thread!

clairec666

WindfallWendy said:

 He can't be bothered playing the RS game and to be honest I think the funds I have are probably at their limit anyway (approx £25-30k circulating across 10-12 RS accounts). 

"Can't be bothered playing the RS game"? What kind of fool is he 

s71hj said:
Incidentally,  having recently interacted with another ?thread/board? On the MSE forum I wanted to comment on how friendly, helpful, tolerant of different level of knowledge this particular one is. It feels like everyone wants to share their knowledge and be helpful rather than scoff if someone asks what is perceived by others as a "silly question".

Don't set foot near the UKPersonalFinance subreddit. Lots of scoffing on there!

allegro120

s71hj said:

Quick question, which I hope will be accepted as being relevant to this thread. It's about feeder accounts for regular savers, and I'm wondering how people manage that side of the whole undertaking. I have about 10000 go out to regular savers at the start of the month, 1st unless a weekend and maybe 4000 spread throughout the rest of a month. This is all by standing order from Santander current account. I'm conscious that the money, therefore, sits in that for a fair proportion of the month awaiting the start of the month earning 2.5%, generally growing to the required amount by maturing savings accounts of various kinds and salary. I'm beginning to wonder if all the advantage I gain from the regular saver boosted rates is lost by the amount of time money sits there waiting for the 1st. However, I don't have the bandwidth in my life for constantly daily monitoring and manual transfers. I think ideally, I need some sort of robo thing to move money from a higher paying saving account to current account as and when I need!!!!. Any ideas or tips about how others coordinate their affairs cost/time effectively on this front much appreciated!

I use standing orders for FD and HSBC, all other RSs I feed manually.  The main disadvantage of SOs is that they don't come out at weekends, the other is inconvenience of an extra layer of maintenance.  I have about 50 RSs and a few feeding accounts, these are constantly changing and I don't fund regularly some of my lower paying RSs,  so for me using SOs across the board would create a logistical nightmare.  

With the exception of Zopa, FD, HSBC, Coventry LSS and Santander I fund my regular savers on the 1st of the month and when if comes to 1st falling on weekend I fund some of them on the next working day.  I use spreadsheet.  All RS's in alphabetical order, with all basic info (account or ref number, %, allowance), those that don't credit at weekends are colour-coded and columns for recording what I deposited and confirmation of arrival.  I also have a column telling me what feeder accounts have payee set up for each RS.  This makes my RS distribution easy to manage.   

Prior to the 1st of the month I make sure that my best paying instant access account have enough funds for RS distribution.  I also prepare a schedule for transactions to ease the workload for distribution day/s.  Sometimes I schedule deposits when my feeder accounts already have enough funds for these transactions.

This works well for me, but it all depends on personal circumstances and preferences.