Savings account recommendations?

You'll be lucky.

I suggest hiring a deposit box and drawing out all your cash from your accounts and placing it in the deposit box. You'll earn nowt and pay a bit for the deposit facility, but have the satisfaction of knowing that no bloody bank is making a bob or two out of your money whilst you are being stuffed.

I recommend that savers unite and exercise our power.

Try:

My god, what s*1t street we are in.............

Shouldn't be difficult to get a lot more than 0.4%. But 3-4% is tricky.

Natwest's own e-savings pay 1.3% (and 2.2% bonus if you'd opened it a few weeks ago**).

Otherwise ING springs to mind, I think still 3.5% again with a bonus.

(**I have a Natwest e-savings account that was supposed to have the bonus included, but when I checked the interest for January it was just the 1.3%. I'll have to chase it up next week.)

BBC Teletext have a list of all the top rates, online, phone, monthly interest, bonus, non bonus, isas notice.The best are still 3 to 4%

In message , Terry Pinnell writes

Maybe look at:

Not the highest, but maybe Alliance & Leicester, at 3.1%? Not listed here: and (not very good at the moment):

In message , brightside S9 writes

That isn't as foolish as it may sound to some. I admit to carrying more cash in my wallet since the banks started going t*ts-up. I hope that a handgun doesn't soon become more useful.

By removing all our savings? A Savers Alliance?

The Times gives a depressing account of how "our" bank are obliged to pay out huge 2008 bonuses because they were written into the contracts of the wretches who got us into this situation.

Ordinary workers outside the financial sector and outside the public sector are regularly having their contracts unilaterally modified, why not the *ankers?

Isn't there something in the T&Cs of typical savings accounts they should be able to pay back all deposits to savers? And if so, who gets priority?

It's possible to get 6-8% at the cost of *a lot* of pissing around. I know someone who's retired who is doing this. Basically he uses regular saver accounts, which are still paying high interest (First Direct is 8% !!). Trouble is there is a low monthly limit (usually about 300) and you have to save regular amounts per month rather than put a lump sum in.

AIUI what he does is he has 12 on the go at a time (6 for him and 6 his wife), he opens one a month and one matures every month. So every month he gets a lump sum of about 3750 from a matured one, which he then reinvests over the other 11 he's got on the go, and opens a new one, leaving him with about 150 "income" every month from his capital of about 22k (I guess).

So in this way he earns 6-8% on all his savings! If he ever wants to make a "withdrawal", he just uses some of the 3600 that month and doesn't invest the maximum over the accounts. If he wants to invest more then I guess he'd have to open another account.

I'm having trouble understanding how a contractual payment can be a bonus, surely that's just normal salary.

If what they mean is the payment is guaranteed but the amount is to be decided later, why can't the amount be decided as 1 penny?

tim

In most of the regular savings accounts, if you miss a payment, then the interest rate goes down for the whole term of the account.

I have three regular savings accounts on the go, but I use them for actual regular savings, and put the money in fixed rate bonds when they mature. I'm saving to build up capital rather than for income, so that works for me.

When I looked at these it was usually limited to some £250 per month up to perhaps £3000 total.

That would be an average balance of some £1500 over a year. If the interest rate gives a 5% advantage over anything else, that means about £75 per year extra benefit, or £60 after tax. That's £5 per month per account.

I would say that whatever extra your friend gets in interest, he earns!

For some of us only considering one of the accounts, the £5 per month benefit doesn't seem worth the trouble. And for people only maintaining a few hundred pounds average balance, the interest rate is almost irrelevant.

Yebbut you can usually reduce payments eg pay 25 instead of 300.

The only one I've got is First Direct - they allow 300 per month.

Well the FD interest rate is 8% now - you'd struggle to get 3% in a normal account now.

He says it's a few hours every month - depending on how easy it is to open a new account. He's got the time anyway.

Personally I CBA, but I think he likes the idea of screwing the banks for all he can get so he enjoys it!

Then it would be pointless. But his average balance over all the accounts is probably over 20k.

Follow Samuel Pepys example. During the Great Fire of London he stored all his cash in iron boxes in his basement.

Or treat yourself to a new mattress, and keep the change under it?

Don't bank's run deposit boxes? So how does this help? They will just put the rates up and pay themselves a million squid bonus for having such a brilliant idea. I want to get my money away from the idiot banks. Is National Savings the way to go? At least then some of my money will go to keep hospitals afloat rather than banker's yachts...

The rates don't look too bad:

Yes and so do other comapnies not connected with banks.

Thanks for all the replies. Following up on the (very few) prime candidates right now.