Best days of month to set up standing orders, plus days for return transfer

madbilly

Hi everyone,

This is about transferring money in and out of a bank account to be eligible for its perks whilst also keeping money in a high-interest savings account as long as possible to get maximum benefit from that.

I was wondering what the best day of the month is to do this, with the aim of setting up standing orders that don't need to be changed for a few years. Here's my thought process

• Standing orders should normally go by the faster payments service, so that should be two days maximum (send one working day and it should arrive by the end of the next working day)
• What this means in practice is that sending on a Friday may mean the money doesn't arrive until the end of the Monday after the weekend
• Or worse, it's a bank holiday and the money doesn't arrive until Tuesday
• Or even worse, it's Easter or Christmas and the money may not arrive until 5 days later!
• To my understanding (and I could have misunderstood something), this means that any return bank transfer to put the money back in the savings account shouldn't be set up until the day after the money will definitely have arrived by - which would be 6 days (okay, this is being super safe, maybe 5 days is okay). That's 6 days interest, per month, being missed out on, that's about 20% of the interest on the amount of money being transferred
• Ideally, the money will spend the fewest days out of the account
• So, which days of the month are best to set this up to avoid bank holidays and weekends?
• Well, first avoid the first 7 days, because that's the range of dates for May Day weekend
• Next avoid the 22nd onwards because that's Christmas and any potential preceding adjoining weekend (23rd and 24th)
• Then there's the tricky question of Easter holiday weekend, it could be any time between 20th March and 26th April, argh!
• But, over the next few years it's only on a set few days and thankfully many of those overlap with the dates it's already good to avoid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_for_Easter
• What about avoiding weekends? Well, if this is a monthly standing order then there will definitely be some weekend clashes at some point during the year, although there probably is a best day to use to avoid as many as possible, however I didn't both doing that! One could set up 12 yearly standing orders, one for each month on the best dates for each month over the next 4 years (only Mon-Thu will work) but that also seems like more hassle than I can be bothered with - if you manage to, or already have, worked this out please share!
• Finally, I think this means that, looking until end of 2033, the following days of the month are the best for setting up monthly standing orders: 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st
• After 2030 the available dates reduce further until end of 2033, until which only the 8th and 9th make sense. After that it's best to start again.

So, where did I go wrong? I think I may be being too cautious with the return transfer, maybe it's okay to set it up to go on the day after sending the outbound one, after all, if the second day of the outbound one is a non-working day then the return one shouldn't be processed anyway.... but does that depend on the institution?

Does the same logic work for an outbound transfer to sync with a direct debit?

Cheers

Martico

I've got several standing orders going out from a Chase savings account that feeds my regular savers. Each one is credited to the recipient account on the same day (FD current account to feed the reg saver the next day, Principality, Aldermore, Newcastle, Co-op). Doesn't make a difference if they're working days or not. I don't know what account you're sending from, but why not run a test on dates that'll include weekends, and see.

SFCooper

Your optimum dates would be either 8th–12th or 18th–21st of each month.

Eco_Miser

If you set weekly SOs on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays, they'll never fall on a weekend, Easter, or Bank Holiday Monday, leaving just 25th, 26th December and 1st January to worry about. Also you'll only be circulating a quarter of the required monthly amount, so lose less interest if stuck over the Christmas/New Year period. 

flaneurs_lobster

madbilly said:

This is about transferring money in and out of a bank account to be eligible for its perks whilst also keeping money in a high-interest savings account as long as possible to get maximum benefit from that.

I was wondering what the best day of the month is to do this, with the aim of setting up standing orders that don't need to be changed for a few years. Here's my thought process

How many transfers are you looking to automate?

If it's no more than half a dozen then just do them manually, far less hassle than trying to work out which day Xmas falls on in 2033.

My 30-odd savers take about an hour at month-start to fund, with a couple of minutes each for the couple that need funding on other dates.

gt94sss2

@madbilly

I suspect you are overcomplicating this and the potential loss of interest from transferring money between accounts is minimal.

However, the answer will depend on the banks and accounts in question, which you don't share..