Regular saver vs other accounts

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  • Herbalus
    Herbalus Posts: 2,634 Forumite
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    Stargunner wrote: »
    Yes I know you get the advertised rate but if you paid in £250 per month (£3000 for the year) it only works out that about half of it has been in thre for a year. I may as well leave the £3000 in a Marcus account.. Obviously it is different for people that don’t already have the funds in savings and are making their payments from the monthly earnings.

    So if you do the regular saver, what are you doing with the other 2750 in month 1 and 2500 in month 2 etc?

    Try again. You’re missing that these funds are in Marcus whilst you start the regular saver. You have both accounts.
  • YorkshireBoy
    YorkshireBoy Posts: 31,541 Forumite
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    Herbalus wrote: »
    So if you do the regular saver, what are you doing with the other 2750 in month 1 and 2500 in month 2 etc?

    Try again. You’re missing that these funds are in Marcus whilst you start the regular saver. You have both accounts.
    Must be happy with 1.5%. Me?...I'd rather my cash was making 2%+. Each to their own though.
  • eskbanker
    eskbanker Posts: 31,034 Forumite
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    Stargunner wrote: »
    I find the problem with the regular savers is that you only get the advertised rate for the year on your first monthly payment because the 2nd payment is only in there for 11 months and the 3rd for 10 months and so on. So if they advertise 3% you only effectively get 1.5% on the whole amount. May as well just leave it in the Marcus.
    Stargunner wrote: »
    Yes I know you get the advertised rate but if you paid in £250 per month (£3000 for the year) it only works out that about half of it has been in thre for a year. I may as well leave the £3000 in a Marcus account.. Obviously it is different for people that don’t already have the funds in savings and are making their payments from the monthly earnings.
    If you dripfeed a 3% regular saver from a 1.5% easy access account then the closing balance will on average have spent about half the time in each account, so the average interest rate on that £3K will be roughly halfway between 1.5% and 3%, i.e. 2.25%.
  • ColdIron
    ColdIron Posts: 9,049 Forumite
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    Stargunner wrote: »
    I may as well leave the £3000 in a Marcus account.
    No, did you try the RS calculator? Plug your numbers in. £250 per month for a year. 1.5% at Marcus and 3% in the RS
    • After drip-feeding the cash for 12 months...
      Total interest earned: £70
      £21 from the normal savings & £49 in the regular saver.
    • If you'd kept the money only in the normal savings account you'd have earned £45 in interest.
    £70 is better than £45 yes?
  • Stargunner
    Stargunner Posts: 681 Forumite
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    My mistake, I didn’t think it through properly and I can see the benefi, but dependant on the rate and the amont you are allowed to save each month the benefit may be very small.
  • ColdIron
    ColdIron Posts: 9,049 Forumite
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    As I said, you're not the first. This issue has come up hundreds of times

    To advance the subject a notch, have you considered that with many (not all) Regular Savers you can make 13 deposits and opening one at the end of the month rather than the first can provide additional returns?
  • quirkydeptless
    quirkydeptless Posts: 1,219 Forumite
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    edited 26 January 2020 at 8:15PM
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    Seemed worth it with the 3-5% Regular Savers, but mine all end this year, so I'll be left scraping together the 2.75% from HSBC and friends, 2.5% from Coventry and Lloyds and a bunch of 2%ers which means my cash is gasping for air above the inflationary tide, but still better than the sub-inflationary easy access bunch which are steadily sinking futher below the waves :(
    Retired 1st July 2021.
    This is not investment advice.
    Your money may go "down and up and down and up and down and up and down ... down and up and down and up and down and up and down ... I got all tricked up and came up to this thing, lookin' so fire hot, a twenty out of ten..."
  • YorkshireBoy
    YorkshireBoy Posts: 31,541 Forumite
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    quirkydeptless wrote: »
    Seemed worth it with the 3-5% Regular Savers, but mine all end this year, so I'll be left scraping together the 2.75% from HSBC and friends, 2.5% from Coventry and Lloyds and a bunch of 2%ers which means my cash is gasping for air above the inflationary tide, but still better than the sub-inflationary easy access bunch which are steadily sinking futher below the waves :(
    But the key thing is that you don't have to do any more work than you did before, ie your pre-requisite current accounts are already open (FD, HSBC, M&S, Club Lloyds, et al). I could understand people not wanting to apply for several current accounts to get access to 2.5% and 2.75% regular savers, but when you already have them...?
  • Fingerbobs
    Fingerbobs Posts: 1,640 Forumite
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    18cc wrote: »
    Is this extra interest worth the extra hassle? Purely a personal decision....

    I personally have decided that it's not.
    One person's hassle is another's hobby :)

    I've managed to get into a state where I've got 12 regular savers running, with one maturing every month of the year. So each month I have a little bit of work to do to roll-over each account, or open a new one for that month if the original has been discontinued.

    I freely admit that the time I spend each month managing and researching the accounts doesn't justify the returns, but it's a hobby for me - I enjoy it!

    I feel exactly the same about Stoozing - I do it because I enjoy it, not because it makes me rich.
  • verybigchris
    verybigchris Posts: 630 Forumite
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    I can never understand the "not worth the hassle" posts. We get them a lot; not just on reg saver posts, but also when there were switching bonuses, current accounts with good rates of interest that needed regular pay-ins, etc.

    Surely anyone with enough spare time to read these threads and post their responses also has enough spare time to jump through these hoops?
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