Savings accounts

Rovers_Andy

Rovers_Andy

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Probable a waste of time with the awful interest rates but anyone know any decent savings accounts on offer?

I want to set aside a regular amount each month....
 
good luck with that one
 
Hi Sarah

Don't have any debt to clear and saving towards house deposit at the moment
 
Santander 123 current account pays 3%, on balances between £3-20k. Better than most savings accounts.
 
Wrong economic climate mate, 1k stashed for 12 month and youre lucky to make £30 in interest

Best option at the moment is Premium Bonds
 
Gary Coyle said:
Wrong economic climate mate, 1k stashed for 12 month and youre lucky to make £30 in interest

Best option at the moment is Premium Bonds
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Funnily enough I was looking at them earlier. Might be worth get a few
 
We've been putting our moderate savings in to Premium Bonds for a few years now & we've always (luckily) beaten the interest which would have been paid from bank/building society.
Most won in a single payment was £100, had a £50, but most `wins` are only £25. We had 8 last year & so far this year we've had 4. It's the luck of the draw though & we could have missed out, but every number has an equal chance of winning.
 
ISA season, have a look and see if anywhere is offering a decent ISA rate. Savings should always be in a tax free environment first and foremost unless even after tax the NET rate beats the Gross rate (or should I say headline) rate of the other product. Bear in mind on non ISA accounts basic rate tax is deducted at 20%. If you are a higher rate tax payer there may well be further tax to pay over and above.

Given you are building a set amount each month, (lets say £500) you cannot go for a bond where the payment has to go in as a lump sum and come out the other end with interest. You are thus looking for an Instant Access type savings product, probably an ISA.

Bear in mind some personal current accounts offer gross rates of 3% upwards but you have to pay £x in per month but you can open up say 5 of them and transact, operate the account in such a way to meet the banks criteria. However, its an awful lot of hassle for not a great amount more tbh unless you are into the tens of thousand or hundreds of thousand and millions the actual rate doesn't in absolute terms make a huge difference and if you have sums like that, you'll be holding fixed term accounts, GILTs, Stocks and Shares etc.

On balance, Instant Access ISA would be just the thing.
 
ST4 said:
ISA season, have a look and see if anywhere is offering a decent ISA rate. Savings should always be in a tax free environment first and foremost unless even after tax the NET rate beats the Gross rate (or should I say headline) rate of the other product. Bear in mind on non ISA accounts basic rate tax is deducted at 20%. If you are a higher rate tax payer there may well be further tax to pay over and above.

Given you are building a set amount each month, (lets say £500) you cannot go for a bond where the payment has to go in as a lump sum and come out the other end with interest. You are thus looking for an Instant Access type savings product, probably an ISA.

Bear in mind some personal current accounts offer gross rates of 3% upwards but you have to pay £x in per month but you can open up say 5 of them and transact, operate the account in such a way to meet the banks criteria. However, its an awful lot of hassle for not a great amount more tbh unless you are into the tens of thousand or hundreds of thousand and millions the actual rate doesn't in absolute terms make a huge difference and if you have sums like that, you'll be holding fixed term accounts, GILTs, Stocks and Shares etc.

On balance, Instant Access ISA would be just the thing.
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Using ISA allowance already, i think Premium bonds will be worth a punt and if i can get the Santander account that is well above what i've seen on any savings accounts so far
 
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I've got a modest sum tucked away in a basic savings account and I have been toying about with the idea of putting some of it into a premium bond.
 
Rovers_Andy said:
Probable a waste of time with the awful interest rates but anyone know any decent savings accounts on offer?

I want to set aside a regular amount each month....
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I retired from paid work four years ago and as I'm still "only" 53 my only income until I hit 60 is from money in the bank. I used to have financial advisors but to be honest they lost me money more often than they made it and these days you can do it yourself pretty easily but if staying away from the stock market and taking no risks you have to work at it.

I max out my ISA allowance every year and also invest in fixed rate bonds. With fixed rate bonds you often get a better rate the longer it lasts so you can go for 1, 2, 3 or more years and get progressively better rates. If you go to one of the comparison sites or type something like "best savings interest rates" into your search engine you should soon be up and running but be careful if you are looking to invest more than the amount protected by our lovely UK government and remember that the protection is per institution and not per bank... so if bank A owns bank B and you have more than the protected amount in them combined you could lose out if one or both go bang. I don't exceed something like £80k per institution. ISA's and fixed rate bonds are my priority and I then keep a good amount in an easy access account and also have a current account which I drip feed into.

I wouldn't recommend Premium Bonds these days, not for a regular income anyway. The theory is that they pay out the equivalent of the interest rate but I think I'm right in saying that they changed the prizes some time ago and now pay out more big prizes and fewer smaller ones. The result of this is you're less likely to win. I put £30k in them some years ago and initially I did ok but now I can miss months and when I do win it's £25. There's a site you can go to and if you type in how many you have and what your winnings are it'll tell you how lucky you are... I'm very unlucky... and at the moment I'm getting back less than £30k would get me in a good rate account so I only keep the PB's for the fun of it now.

If you have money going in every month that'll up your chances of getting a better rate also if you have direct debits too and you should be able to factor these things in when doing a search. Some of these better rate accounts limit how much you can put in and there are bonus rates with end dates too so you need to keep on top of things. I allocate one day per month to this together with energy, insurance and the like and I chop and change for the best deals.

As well as working at getting the best deal on your savings I'd also recommend getting the best deal on any outgoings if you are not doing so already. I do all of the usuals on line now, car and house insurance, gas and electricity...

Good luck with it.
 
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Ian D J said:
I've got a modest sum tucked away in a basic savings account and I have been toying about with the idea of putting some of it into a premium bond.
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You can purchase anything up to £30k Max now & they have to be in `the draw` a full month before you have a chance/actually entered.
Thing is, you have the chance of winning anything from £1 mill...............down to £25 every month + your money is safe. The longer your numbers are kept, the more chance of winning summat.
 
woof woof said:
I max out my ISA allowance every year and also invest in fixed rate bonds. With fixed rate bonds you often get a better rate the longer it lasts so you can go for 1, 2, 3 or more years and get progressively better rates. If you go to one of the comparison sites or type something like "best savings interest rates" into your search engine you should soon be up and running but be careful if you are looking to invest more than the amount protected by our lovely UK government and remember that the protection is per institution and not per bank... so if bank A owns bank B and you have more than the protected amount in them combined you could lose out if one or both go bang. I don't exceed something like £80k per institution. ISA's and fixed rate bonds are my priority and I then keep a good amount in an easy access account and also have a current account which I drip feed into.

I wouldn't recommend Premium Bonds these days, not for a regular income anyway. The theory is that they pay out the equivalent of the interest rate but I think I'm right in saying that they changed the prizes some time ago and now pay out more big prizes and fewer smaller ones. The result of this is you're less likely to win. I put £30k in them some years ago and initially I did ok but now I can miss months and when I do win it's £25. There's a site you can go to and if you type in how many you have and what your winnings are it'll tell you how lucky you are... I'm very unlucky... and at the moment I'm getting back less than £30k would get me in a good rate account so I only keep the PB's for the fun of it now.
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I think fixed bonds will be something i'll look at in in 1-2 years as aiming to buy a house next year so don't want anything tied up right now
 
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Rovers_Andy said:
I think fixed bonds will be something i'll look at in in 1-2 years as aiming to buy a house next year so don't want anything tied up right now
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I think that the best advice I can give is to view this as your job :D You have to these days as rates are on the floor.

If I can get a slightly better rate here and cut expenditure a bit there I do it as it all mounts up. I look at weekly/monthly but then look at the yearly figure as £1 a week on a deal doesn't look as if it's worth the effort but look at it as £52 a year and it's tempting :D If you can do that with savings accounts and outgoings it pretty quickly justifies spending one day a month on the computer :D
 
ST4 said:
Sounds sensible. Even after tax, a 3% yield isn't bad. Please ensure though you adhere to the T&Cs of that product.
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It won't take to much to do that, switch a couple of Direct Debits to the account and add enough to cover them on the monthly transfer (can be from any account except Santander)
 
First direct pay 6% gross and you can deposit £300 PM in a regular saver account for 12 months.

Just started my 3rd one.
 
phil8139 said:
First direct pay 6% gross and you can deposit £300 PM in a regular saver account for 12 months.

Just started my 3rd one.
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Looks good but i would have to open a current account with them to get it. With the Santander account it would mean having 3 current accounts which is a bit extreme i think
 
SarahLee said:
TBH if you have spare disposable income each month, at the moment you're probably better off using it to pay off any debts - highest interest loans first or pay extra toward your mortgage to bring the capital down while interest rates are still low.
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yep thats what we are doing mortage x4
 
Given your relatively short term horizon, the savings products mentioned here are likely to be the most useful. Investing in funds and shares needs a longer horizon, especially how high the stock markets are at the moment. It's very possible that you may have lost money in 2-3 years time.
 
6.65% ;)

https://www.lendinvest.com/

Warning: you can lose all your money. Don't blame me if you do.

It's a bit different from most peer to peer schemes and seems a bit safer though of course you could lose all your money (did I say that yet?)
 
JonathanRyan said:
6.65% ;)

https://www.lendinvest.com/

Warning: you can lose all your money. Don't blame me if you do.

It's a bit different from most peer to peer schemes and seems a bit safer though of course you could lose all your money (did I say that yet?)
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Never heard of lendinvest before! Looks very interesting, but wonder what the process of repossessing the property is like as it appears that lendinvest is more a market place joining borrowers with lenders and you're probably on your own if someone defaults.
 
hsuffyan said:
Never heard of lendinvest before! Looks very interesting, but wonder what the process of repossessing the property is like as it appears that lendinvest is more a market place joining borrowers with lenders and you're probably on your own if someone defaults.
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It's a bit more complicated than that ;)

If I have it right then Lendinvest personally lend the money to the person buying the property and then backfill by selling the loans to replenish their cash. You'd need to look at what surety the borrower offered on the loan but my understanding is that it isn't always the property. They do vet their clients pretty carefully and so far have a zero default rate but of course you could lose all your money :)
 
JonathanRyan said:
It's a bit more complicated than that ;)

If I have it right then Lendinvest personally lend the money to the person buying the property and then backfill by selling the loans to replenish their cash. You'd need to look at what surety the borrower offered on the loan but my understanding is that it isn't always the property. They do vet their clients pretty carefully and so far have a zero default rate but of course you could lose all your money :)
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Similar to what the US banks did, but less stringent in the vetting process - and majority were sub prime and so the crash....
 
LASTOLITE said:
Similar to what the US banks did, but less stringent in the vetting process - and majority were sub prime and so the crash....
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Well, some of the US banks were less stringent, and some knowingly bundled up toxic loans that they knew would be defaulted on then packaged them to look like they wouldn't and sold them to their own customers. And then it got really messy. But yes, as I mentioned, it could be risky. And "risky" here means the far more important "you could lose all your money" rather than "all of western banking could collapse".

You'd probably want to read a bunch of the stuff on 4th Way (http://www.4thway.co.uk/) before you invested more than you'd stake on a hand of poker.
 
If you are a first time buyer the Help to Buy ISAs should be launching this autumn, of course any new government may decide to scrap them before they start!
Pay in monthly and you get a bonus from the government. No idea what the interest rates will be and you cannot have cash ISA and a Help to Buy ISA opened and running in the same year.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/help-to-buy-ISA
 
kelack said:
Does Zopa work on a similar principal? I had a Zopa loan. The interest rate was really low and I think the way it worked was that I had 100 odd people lending me £10 each.
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Yes. Zopa is one of the oldest established P2P lenders.

You pay a low rate (compared to a bank's lending rate) but that works out to a decent return to the lenders.
 
hsuffyan said:
Given your relatively short term horizon, the savings products mentioned here are likely to be the most useful. Investing in funds and shares needs a longer horizon, especially how high the stock markets are at the moment. It's very possible that you may have lost money in 2-3 years time.
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I agree, most of current savings will be going towards deposit for house next year (if i can get a f*&king mortgage thanks to the EU!) After that the savings will be longer term i.e 30 yrs so towards pension/retirement etc so will have to accept fluctuations but over that period they should grow nicely.

Have looked at peer to peer lending but for the returns i don't think it's worth the risk. I can get 3% upto 20K with santander and 6% on 250 per month with HSBC thats FSA covered and my ISA's are performing reasonably
 
Suvv said:
If you are a first time buyer the Help to Buy ISAs should be launching this autumn, of course any new government may decide to scrap them before they start!
Pay in monthly and you get a bonus from the government. No idea what the interest rates will be and you cannot have cash ISA and a Help to Buy ISA opened and running in the same year.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/help-to-buy-ISA
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Yep first time buyer but already using my full ISA allowance
 
JonathanRyan said:
Well, some of the US banks were less stringent, and some knowingly bundled up toxic loans that they knew would be defaulted on then packaged them to look like they wouldn't and sold them to their own customers. And then it got really messy. But yes, as I mentioned, it could be risky. And "risky" here means the far more important "you could lose all your money" rather than "all of western banking could collapse".

You'd probably want to read a bunch of the stuff on 4th Way (http://www.4thway.co.uk/) before you invested more than you'd stake on a hand of poker.
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Yes a very simplistic account of the crash from me......But you get where I was coming from......personally I am risk averse myself....
 
My current view on savings accounts is screw em except for the odd monthly saving thing, the interest is so low its pointless. I just use current accounts, the odd monthly saver and premium bonds.

Lloyds for example have the following:
Club Lloyds Account - 4% on £4000-£5000. So £200 a year.
Requirements: 2 Direct Debits and £1500 in each month or you get charged £5. (I have no direct debit payments, as I don't have any out going monthly costs. So I just do 2 x PayPal add money requests)

Club Lloyds Monthly Saver:
4% interest for 12 months, max of £400 deposited a month. You can withdraw money at any time, you get the interest at the end of the 12 months.
£4800 a year is the max you can deposit, so £192 in interest.

Lloyds monthly saver:
Not as good, only 0.75% on £1500 or more. Max deposit of £250 a month.

Tesco:
3% on £3000
Minimum deposit of £750 a month

Nationwide also have good offers and I'll be opening an account with them this week.

There is also premium bonds, unlike interest it isn't taxed and you can withdraw money at any time. There is also no limit as to how much you can put in there.
So far this year I have won £750 and I have around £5000 in there, so thats equal to about 15% interest. But premium bonds are pure luck, I was unlucky last year - less than £500 for the entire year on £10k.
 
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Alisonfd said:
There is also no limit as to how much you can put in there.
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There is a limit. It used to be £30k but think it's now £40k.

We have a good few & over the years have been lucky that the winnings have bettered ordinary savings accounts.
 
OldCarlos said:
There is a limit. It used to be £30k but think it's now £40k.

We have a good few & over the years have been lucky that the winnings have bettered ordinary savings accounts.
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Ahhh, I was misinformed. Thanks for correcting me.
 
LASTOLITE said:
Yes a very simplistic account of the crash from me......But you get where I was coming from......personally I am risk averse myself....
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Then you'll want savings certificates or less than £50K in a UK backed bank. Santander will take some beating (and yes, I know they are really Spanish.... :) )
 
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