New saver advice!

Red-Squirrel wrote: »

T&Cs say interest is paid up to £1501 so I'm not wasting a penny!

Before you cause a stampede of people paying an extra pound into their Classic Plus account... where did you read the £1501 figure?

Notwithstanding the glitch you had with the online application process, most of the time it seems TSB's online banking is working for most people. But it is very annoying/frustrating for those who are having problems.

But as you are only intending to use the account for savings it is unlikely you'll have any major issues... and if something does go wrong, the branch staff are usually very helpful... as you've already discovered.

Reading this thread I'm now debating opening one (or more) of these TSB Classic Plus accounts but I'm just trying to get my head round something.

The only reason to have this would be to just have £1500 of your savings earning 5% interest (which you can then cream off and put elsewhere) and thats it. Any other savings you have over £1,500 would need to be held elsewhere.

Am I right?

fiestaman87 wrote: »

Reading this thread I'm now debating opening one (or more) of these TSB Classic Plus accounts but I'm just trying to get my head round something.

The only reason to have this would be to just have £1500 of your savings earning 5% interest (which you can then cream off and put elsewhere) and thats it. Any other savings you have over £1,500 would need to be held elsewhere.

Well you could use it as a current account, but probably best not to until their IT problems are behind them.

It is also useful to hold as a second current account (if you don't have a spare one already) in case your main bank has IT troubles at some point in the future.

And the other benefit is having an eligible current account with TSB allows you to open a monthly saver paying 2% interest on up to £250 deposited per month for a year. Not the best interest rate, but easy to open if you already have a current account with TSB, and instant access to your money if you need to withdraw it.

Between my wife and I we have 4 TSB accounts, I don't think you can have 2 sole name accounts any more but you used to be able to.

We have simple standing orders set up to transfer the £500 to these and our other current account 'savings' accounts'.

We actually transfer the maximum needed for one of our others so on the 2nd of the month £1250 goes on a merry little trip from our main current account taking in the sights from TSB, Lloyds, Tesco, First Direct* & Nationwide ending up back in Santander (occasionally stopping to shed some pounds into 5% regular savers along the way) refreshed from its little holiday .

* Transferred to get a new account bonus, going to do this again soon for another bonus when I get around to it.

On the IT issues, we never had any with our TSB accounts - their website is definitely slower than other banks but not drastically slower or unusable.

EachPenny wrote: »

Well you could use it as a current account, but probably best not to until their IT problems are behind them.

It is also useful to hold as a second current account (if you don't have a spare one already) in case your main bank has IT troubles at some point in the future.

And the other benefit is having an eligible current account with TSB allows you to open a monthly saver paying 2% interest on up to £250 deposited per month for a year. Not the best interest rate, but easy to open if you already have a current account with TSB, and instant access to your money if you need to withdraw it.

EachPenny,

Thanks for the tips and advice.

I am opening a TSB Classic account but I won't be using it as a main current account for the following reasons:

* I have an HSBC Advance current account which I switched last year (and got £150 for the trouble) and I'm expecting another £50 in a couple of months. Also this account has a 5% linked saver of which I'm paying in the max £250 per month.

* I have 2 other current accounts besides the one above, a Starling account solely for use abroad and a Santander Zero dormant account with a small amount as I still have other products with them.

* I have a Virgin Money Regular Saver (3%) which I'm paying in the max £250 each month.

I will be studying with interest your posts in future (not in a creepy way though:rotfl:) as you do seem to know your stuff.