The Top Regular Savers Discussion Thread

Bridlington1

Russ66 said:

Bridlington1 said:

One option would be to open now but then refresh if still available in a month or two to push the maturity date on a bit.

This way you can still secure the account and don't risk missing out if it goes NLA sooner than it did last year but retain the option of pushing the maturity date on a couple of months if still available at the time.

Probably being a bit dull here but what do you mean by "Refresh"
Do you mean open one now then close it & open another down the line if still available? TIA

By ``refresh" I mean close an account to reopen the same account. So yes, with Principality accounts (and others) I'll often open one when they're launched, then close and reopen the account at the end of the month if still available.

For future reference I have also included this term in the list of common abbreviations and their meanings on page 1 of this thread.

Pompeydave1967

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 ? 

TheQuaker

Not the best RS weekend for me. A bit amateur on my part in this game. Newcastle and Manchester bounced as I didn't use the nominated account. Hanley, my password doesn't work even though it is correct. Phoned them today and they said they unlocked it but clearly not. Another call tomorrow. Plus realised I didn't have an online login for Scottish BS, so had to apply for that. Joys... !!!

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