Regular saver or standard saving accounts

lotussko

Hi everyone,

I have read Martin's suggestions as to where to put your savings but I'm still unsure about whether I should open a Regular saver account. At the moment I have an ISA with A&L at 6.05% in which I have put my full allowance for the year; I also have a standard saving account with Sainsbury at 6% with about £21 000 in it. Is it still worth opening a regular saver account at a higher rate or shall I just try to move my savings to another standard saving account with a higher rate?

Would really appreciate your opinion on that!

Thanks everyone!

Lotus

Aegis

If you can afford to pay in at regular intervals, then combining a regular saver with a standard savings account will increase your overall return.

All in all, you might as well do it if you can live with the regular saver stealing money from one of your other accounts on a monthly basis!

Mikeyorks

You might consider 'fixing' some of the £21k if you can tie it up for a period. See the Halifax rates :-

http://www.halifax.co.uk/savings/fixedwebsaver.asp

.... particularly attractive for the shorter term - but you can do better elsewhere for e.g. a 1 year tie in.

Regular saver - as Aegis' post .... it's worth it purely for the extra interest, provided you can cope with the initial hassle of setting it up? Halifax not the best rates at 7% - but convenient to SO across from Sainsbury, if it's 'saved' as opposed to 'new' money you'll be putting in.

YorkshireBoy

Mikeyorks wrote: »

Halifax not the best rates at 7% - but convenient to SO across from Sainsbury, if it's 'saved' as opposed to 'new' money you'll be putting in.

I don't think you can set up SO's, or even a series of future dated one-off transfers, from the Sainsbury's account Mike.

Mikeyorks

Whoops - that's my learning point for today! Only invest in litres of milk from them .... so a bit anticipatory and, for once, didn't check.:o

knights

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

I don't think you can set up SO's, or even a series of future dated one-off transfers, from the Sainsbury's account Mike.

That is true YB you can only make payments one at a time rather that regular SO's

Special_Saver2

I would suggest:

1. Keep an eye on Alliance & Leicester's website - I suspect the rate on your ISA will drop by 0.25% any day now. When it does, look at Kazza's thread Mini Cash ISAs: The Best ISAs Currently Available List and consider transferring it to a provider that will pay better interest. I say "consider" because you will lose a bit of interest during a transfer (although with ISA transfers some providers will backdate the interest to the day the money left your old provider) and if the amount of interest gained from a transfer to a higher paying provider is minimal then you might want to avoid the hassle of a transfer.

2. Put away any money that you are really sure you will not need for a year or longer into a fixed interest bond.

3. Drip feed any money that you may need to get at in the next year into one or more regular savings accounts. If you look at my thread Regular Savings Accounts: The Best Currently Available List! then you can see the terms and conditions of the accounts on offer - there are plenty of accounts there that will let you make one or two penalty free withdrawals per year. Just make sure you read the terms and conditions carefully and choose the account that suits you (and when looking at the interest rates, take into account that some providers have not yet dropped their interest rates by 0.25% yet but will do so in the next few days).

4. Keep any money that you will definitely need in the next year in your Sainsbury's savings account.

I think those four points above make for a reasonable strategy.

The Sainsbury's account that you have is quite a good one for drip feeding money into a regular saver as the money can be drip fed directly without having to go through a current account. The only problem is that you cannot forward date the payments, so once a month you will have to login to Sainsbury's internet banking and manually transfer the money to your regular saver accounts (but you don't have to enter the account details each time - you only need to enter them the first time, then Sainsbury's internet banking will remember them for you for the future).

21castlehill

Lloyds TSB have opened something called a monthly saver, you can deposit £500 then drip feed @ up to £250PM for a year for an 8% interest rate. You can pay in only once a month but can withdraw penalty free any time you like so worth putting some cash that you dont or MAY need in there.

knights

I think this account has been around sometime.

Prior to 12th March 07 the account was fixed for 2 years, since then one year.

Yes there is access to your money if you need it but you cannot replace it.

Waiting to see if Lloyds will do a follow up account.