ISA advice

Astraeus

Thank you very much for your guidance, Aegis. I've been looking around at the various posts whilst waiting on your responses and have noticed that the Nationwide Fixed Rate ISA seems to suffer from very long application periods. As I already bank with Halifax, it may well be easier and more convenient just to put the £3,300 transfer into the 1-Year Fixed Rate ISA at Halifax and keep looking for the best place to put my £1,600 of new money (maybe even put it in the Halifax account as well!).

Lychee

Hi

Hope no one minds me borrowing this thread as I'm after some ISA advice.

I am thinking of reinvesting a current Nationwide Fixed Rate ISA on maturity, but also want to put last year's ISA (currently with someone else) into a Nationwide Fixed Rate ISA. It doesn't seem easy & straightforward to consolidate the two into one ISA so I'm thinking of just having two separate Fixed Rate ISAs with Nationwide, and they'll probably have different maturity dates. I was wondering whether there would be any serious cons to this and anyone would advise it's a bad idea to do this??

Thanks

Baldur

Lychee wrote: »

It doesn't seem easy & straightforward to consolidate the two into one ISA so I'm thinking of just having two separate Fixed Rate ISAs with Nationwide, and they'll probably have different maturity dates. I was wondering whether there would be any serious cons to this and anyone would advise it's a bad idea to do this??

Given that a friend has been waiting since 4th April for Nationwide to sort out transfers from two previous ISA providers, with no apparent movement yet from any of the institutions, they would almost certainly have different maturity dates.

If you are happy with fixed rates & are prepared to keep an eye on two different maturity dates, the only downside would be if rates in general rose during the fixed rate period (which looks highly unlikely at the moment, IMHO).

nrsql

Astraeus wrote: »

Thanks. And you would recommend the Barclay's as a good ISA to have for new money? I tend to stick to the big banks for ISAs due to ease of access to branches and, in the long-term, the fact that having had ISAs with these banks may help me in securing mortgages, loans, credit etc.

Barclays have a 1% bonus for the first year and so almost certainly won't be competitive after that.
Someone said that they transfered out before the year was up because the rate was reduced so even with the bonus it wasn't good.
I've just had a letter after a couple of weeks saying that it will take another 4 weeks to open the account - interest not backdated.

All in all I think the interest lost in the delays and effort for the transfer won't be worth the extra rate period. I could have stayed at home and dumped it into egg.
Doh!