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Mature Postgraduate Student Account

I am about to return to University full-time to do a research council funded PhD after working for a few years. I am a homeowner and would like to keep the current account I use at the moment solely to pay the bills and mortgage. For my day to day transactions I would like to open a student account to be able to take advantage of the preferential overdraft scheme etc. Every month I would transfer a chunk of my grant cheque cash from the student account to the "house matters" account to pay my mortgage and bills. I would hope the amount of money being transferred monthly (say 500 pounds or more) would be enough to allow me to keep the (reasonably large) overdraft facility I have with my current bank as well.

Does anyone reading this newsgroup have any experience of this - most of the information I can find on the internet from the high st. banks seems to say I should have graduated from my undergrad degree within the last three years to be eligible for their post-graduate student accounts, but I may be reading it incorrectly. I also wonder if anyone has any idea of how much money needs to be going into an account monthly for them not to take an overdraft of (say) 3000 pounds away (I got this when I was comparatively well-paid). At the minute the account is well in credit, but of course this may change when i start living on student money again - it would be nice to have the extra security of some breathing space for the "house" account.

Thanks in advance...

Reply to
INeedHelp
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I had a similar problem a few years back and managed to get onto a graduate account for the duration of my studies - it had free banking and interest free overdraft. It turned out the local branch manager had discretion (even though I technically failed to meet the criteria). This may have changed, but if not try a University branch of a bank rather than a regular one (though my example was from a local branch of Lloyds, I think the manager was unusually laid back about the situation).

Thom

Reply to
Thom Baguley

I'm a US student who will be coming to London to study for a year. Can you suggest a couple of good banks that I should think about using because (1) fees are small, (2) cash machines are plentiful and their fees are small, (3) they are nice??? Perhaps I am asking for too much.

"Stephen Burke" wrote in news:lp61b.60$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfep4-glfd.server.ntli.net:

Reply to
Kai

HSBC is one of the bigest banks in the UK and they operate in New York. As you're posting from Columbia University, I would recommend visiting one of their branches in New York and opening a US account

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Later you can open a UK account with HSBC in London.

Having a US account with HSBC will help you with what we will be your two biggest problems

1) ID/credit checks when opening any UK account. Since you will already be an HSBC account holder, HSBC in the US can identify you to HSBC in the UK. 2) Transfering money betweeen the US and the UK. HSBC will be able to transfer money between your US and UK accounts whilst avoiding some of the delays and fees of international clearing.

Bruce

Reply to
Bruce Robson

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