The Top Regular Savers Discussion Thread

jaypers

Hattie627 said:

Yorkshire BS: Possible Xmas RS for 2025?

Has anyone heard anything about this as a likelihood? If I remember correctly, the 2024 Xmas RS launched around 17 or 18 January 2024, with maturity on 31 October 2024, so not a full year.

(Apologies if question already asked)

The email launching it last year landed in my Inbox on 17th Jan.

WillPS

happybagger said:

WillPS said:

happybagger said:

surreysaver said:

Bridlington1 said:

OneUser1 said:

This WON’T get you into a Vernon Building Society 6.5% Regular Saver at the moment but might be useful information for those who take a long view.

The Vernon usually only let locals (25 miles of Stockport) open accounts although they’ve offered to anyone a rubbish bond for a while with a high minimum balance and low interest rate. However they occasionally relax things and I note currently you can open a range of accounts including a £100 minimum balance Easy Access account. But not the Regular Saver.

Like I said they change the requirements from time to time so MAYBE they will offer some future Regular Saver to locals and existing members. Or, of course, they might offer a new Regular Saver open to anyone. Or not. But they do change and change back so this could be a good time to get in if that’s your thing.

There appears to be a way of holding onto membership with £1 if you don't mind sacrificing some of your ISA allowance.

Their Regular Saver ISA is currently open to all, this requires £25 to open the account. Once open there is no minimum withdrawal amount but you must keep £1 in the account to keep it open.

The terms do reference a £25 minimum monthly deposit although it also says if you miss at least 1 monthly payment you'll lose the bonus rate of interest so one interpretation of this term could be that you can miss payments but the penalty for doing so is the loss of the bonus rate of interest (in other words you shall earn 3.15% instead of 3.8%)

If I understand Vernon's T&Cs for the easy access account, you just need to pay in £100 to open it. You can then withdraw £99 of that, as the T&Cs state you just need to have a balance in the account to prevent it being closed.
I've opened an easy access account with them and shall close my 35 Day Notice account I opened with them last year, as that's got £500 sitting in it not doing much 

... which is pretty much what I said yesterday, although I suggested the EA account stay with the £100 balance so not to make it too obvious (as I said the opportunity cost about £2) And Yes @Essex123 bagged a few by opening larger balances then getting the decent account, can't ever recall having any "deposit" accounts though, only ever Share accounts

What's wrong with 'being obvious'? Plenty of people leave a token minimum amount in a building society to maintain membership, it's not at all improper.

Nottingham BS even encouraged that we should consider doing this if we needed to draw down an account.

I'm not sure why they'd have any reason to object?

Nothing insofar as the applicant is concerned. After all, it's within the terms.
As regards to them putting up the shutters / closing the loophole, when a small BS with just one person doing these things in St Petersgate is concerned, that's a different matter.
Each to their own.

Customer acquisition is an expensive business. It seems bizarre to me to suggest a business would object to a customer doing what they can to be eligible to products they might offer in future; even if that comes to nought.

If the society wants to make those customers ineligible for certain products then that's a lever they can pull (as Vernon have done!).

qsk

[Deleted User] said:

PloughmansLunch said:

Can anybody please confirm that Skipton RS maturity either takes place later in the day or on working days only? Mine matures today and I’d like to tick off interest on my spreadsheet and open a new one, but it’s still showing the same as it’s been all January. 

I'm not expecting mine to show till Monday.

Mine matured yesterday and disappeared from account list today (I guess it would appear again tomorrow with a different type). Opened a new one just now (still 7%) - worked a treat. 

bioboybill

PloughmansLunch said:

Can anybody please confirm that Skipton RS maturity either takes place later in the day or on working days only? Mine matures today and I’d like to tick off interest on my spreadsheet and open a new one, but it’s still showing the same as it’s been all January. 

Mine matured today and moved into my EA account as I had instructed. The interest was already added when I logged in at 8am this morning, but when I withdrew a message said it would be processed on Monday.

I was able to open a new RS straight away, but again my deposit won't be processed until Monday.

Essex123

@happybagger I had a dig through some old papers!

I’d opened a deposit account with the Nottingham at their (long gone) London ‘broom cupboard’ on Jermyn Street.  On 26/08/1998 they sent me a letter offering to convert my Personal Deposit into the share version - Access Plus.  Obviously I accepted!

National Counties wrote to me on 28th August 1998 also offering to convert my Direct Access Deposit to a Direct Access Share.  The stinger here was that they also required a minimum deposit of £2500 on the Share version.  So this one I refused and only became a member at a later date.

Such a shame all the old threads from Carpetbagger.com and Rpoints were lost, would be fun to look back now at some of the games we played!

Bridlington1

qsk said:

[Deleted User] said:

PloughmansLunch said:

Can anybody please confirm that Skipton RS maturity either takes place later in the day or on working days only? Mine matures today and I’d like to tick off interest on my spreadsheet and open a new one, but it’s still showing the same as it’s been all January. 

I'm not expecting mine to show till Monday.

Mine matured yesterday and disappeared from account list today (I guess it would appear again tomorrow with a different type). Opened a new one just now (still 7%) - worked a treat. 

It's also worth noting that Skipton BS are one of those helpful building societies where the account term begins the day you make your opening deposit rather than the day you apply for the account so if you wanted to maximise your interest and ensure the account matures at the most convenient time for funding other regular savers you could delay funding till 31st so that the account matures at the end of next January.

Alternatively IIRC you can close a Skipton account and then reopen another of the same type the same day so you could fund the account tomorrow and then ``refresh" at the end of the month if it's still available to push the maturity date on a bit.

[Deleted User]

qsk said:

[Deleted User] said:

PloughmansLunch said:

Can anybody please confirm that Skipton RS maturity either takes place later in the day or on working days only? Mine matures today and I’d like to tick off interest on my spreadsheet and open a new one, but it’s still showing the same as it’s been all January. 

I'm not expecting mine to show till Monday.

Mine matured yesterday and disappeared from account list today (I guess it would appear again tomorrow with a different type). Opened a new one just now (still 7%) - worked a treat. 

I think I put this in the wrong thread, its the member saver at 5% (previously 5.5%) thats maturing for me.

twadds123

Seen a few people discussing "renewing" the skipton members saver, currently @7%.

By renewing I presume you mean closing the existing one and opening a new one at the current issue before they potentially change the interest rate on the next issue?

Question though, is it worth it?  right now i've got £2000 in that account, is it not best to leave that there and be earning interest on the larger amounts over the next few months than start again?

or is the believe that the drop in rate on the next offer might be so much to offset that?

any thoughts greatly appreciated.

trickydicky14

twadds123 said:

Seen a few people discussing "renewing" the skipton members saver, currently @7%.

By renewing I presume you mean closing the existing one and opening a new one at the current issue before they potentially change the interest rate on the next issue?

Question though, is it worth it?  right now i've got £2000 in that account, is it not best to leave that there and be earning interest on the larger amounts over the next few months than start again?

or is the believe that the drop in rate on the next offer might be so much to offset that?

any thoughts greatly appreciated.

I'm in the same position, 2k saved. The thing is if I closed it at best I would put the cash into an EA saver paying no more than 4.75% and who knows, that could soon go down. So a bit of a gamble.

happybagger

Essex123 said:

@happybagger I had a dig through some old papers!

I’d opened a deposit account with the Nottingham at their (long gone) London ‘broom cupboard’ on Jermyn Street.  On 26/08/1998 they sent me a letter offering to convert my Personal Deposit into the share version - Access Plus.  Obviously I accepted!

National Counties wrote to me on 28th August 1998 also offering to convert my Direct Access Deposit to a Direct Access Share.  The stinger here was that they also required a minimum deposit of £2500 on the Share version.  So this one I refused and only became a member at a later date.

Such a shame all the old threads from Carpetbagger.com and Rpoints were lost, would be fun to look back now at some of the games we played!

Yes it was a change as part of the BS Act of 1997. I didn't have any money until 1999 when I started bagging. Reg Savers were not a thing then. As the societies found ways to "get their way" without member approval, I started to debag, which was a mistake, as it made things simpler to open accounts when they became available. Progressive's RS account being the most recent. I retained Vernon as it was my hardest 'bag', so their 6.5% account was easy. I kicked myself for missing out on Leek BS when theirs was top paying but members (or locals) only.

The tale is to retain a membership account just in case, particularly if the balance can be minimal. Modern day bagging