The Lemon Fool

Is there a simple way of determining the current interest rate on above, from within the online site?

Banks are frequently changing the rates and limits and it seems to be a detective job to find out what we are on at the moment.

Thinking of Nationwide and TSB for example.

feder1 wrote:Is there a simple way of determining the current interest rate on above, from within the online site?

Banks are frequently changing the rates and limits and it seems to be a detective job to find out what we are on at the moment.

Thinking of Nationwide and TSB for example.

I searched on a search engine for "Nationwide interest rates" (without the punctuation) and found this:

https://www.nationwide.co.uk/products/s ... s-accounts

Similarly for TSB:

https://www.tsb.co.uk/help/rates-and-charges/savings/

I haven't looked for their interest bearing current accounts, if any.

If you are looking around, try http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/arti ... ranch.html as an example.

I assume by "within the online site" you mean "using internet banking" - i.e you are looking at your own accounts not just at a general info page of rates etc?

For Nationwide, go to "Overview of accounts" page, click on the relevant account - this takes you to a page showing your current balance, recent transactions and the interest rate (and payment date, frequency and where paid to). The ordinary Flexaccount current account does not pay interest so this doesn't apply to that. I'm not sure about other Nationwide current accounts.

For TSB, there doesn't seem to be info linked to your online banking, but rates are here: https://www.tsb.co.uk/help/rates-and-charges/

Both the Bank of Scotland Vantage account and the similar Club Lloyds account that pay 2% interest on balances up to £5,000 are dropping the rate to 1.5% from July 2018.

I have often wondered whether the Banks could be prosecuted under the Trades Description Act for using the name "Savings Accounts" for accounts which pay interest less than the retail price index. Maybe they should be forced to call them "Losing Accounts". OK - perhaps I should have placed this in the Bitter Lemons board, but I too have been looking up the interest paid on my RBS "savings" account which appears to be a handsome 0.1%.

scotia wrote:I have often wondered whether the Banks could be prosecuted under the Trades Description Act for using the name "Savings Accounts" for accounts which pay interest less than the retail price index. Maybe they should be forced to call them "Losing Accounts". OK - perhaps I should have placed this in the Bitter Lemons board, but I too have been looking up the interest paid on my RBS "savings" account which appears to be a handsome 0.1%.

They are called savings accounts not increasing accounts... the point being they are where you save money, the ultimate value of that money isn't really relevant. Besides even a 0.01% account gives you a free treasure vault rental and free insurance on the contents.

the ultimate value of that money isn't really relevant

I disagree - Savings implies that the value is saved.

Besides even a 0.01% account gives you a free treasure vault rental and free insurance on the contents.

I am not naïve enough to imagine that the Bank simply keeps my money safe in a vault. The Bank will make use of this money - and may make appallingly bad investment decisions. Consequently the Bank can go bust, and the FSCS protection limit on the "savings" is £85000.

scotia wrote:

the ultimate value of that money isn't really relevant

I disagree - Savings implies that the value is saved.

Savings refers to what you are saving eg. money, it infers nothing about interest or value.

saving
NOUN

2usually one's savingsThe money one has saved, especially through a bank or official scheme.

‘the agents were cheating them out of their life savings’
More example sentencesSynonyms

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/saving

scotia wrote:
I am not naïve enough to imagine that the Bank simply keeps my money safe in a vault. The Bank will make use of this money - and may make appallingly bad investment decisions. Consequently the Bank can go bust, and the FSCS protection limit on the "savings" is £85000.

Which would leave you with somewhere to store your money and free insurance on it... far better than keeping it under the mattress, and returns that bad are only for those who don't bother to keep their money moving, and earning.

FSCS limit is largely moot given the number of £85,000's you can have covered, and also since if you want a semi decent rate of return you wouldn't lodge half that amount with most banks.

They are called savings accounts not increasing accounts...

Well yes, but they are also not called deposit accounts - remember those? Were they purely for storage, or were they savings accounts (i.e. with added interest) by another name?

Traditionally savings accounts offer interest as an inducement to save, and are not just vaults, and the bank expects the money to be there for a while longer than in a current account.

Are there any crypto-currency savings accounts?

bruncher wrote:Traditionally savings accounts offer interest as an inducement to save, and are not just vaults, and the bank expects the money to be there for a while longer than in a current account.

Savings accounts are safer than current accounts because there are typically fewer ways to access the money, meaning a lower risk of loss by fraud.

Or at least that is what NatWest keep telling me to try and get me open one. They claim I have "too much cash" in my current account and therefore am taking risk of loss.

bruncher wrote:

They are called savings accounts not increasing accounts...

Well yes, but they are also not called deposit accounts - remember those? Were they purely for storage, or were they savings accounts (i.e. with added interest) by another name?

Nope... but I would guess they were for depositing your money in, just like savings accounts are for saving your money in. Time to break out the piggy bank and raid the savings... do piggy banks pay interest? Savings accounts are literally named after the act of putting money to one side for later use. Aren't you going to eat that biscuit? No I am saving it for later.

bruncher wrote:Traditionally savings accounts offer interest as an inducement to save, and are not just vaults, and the bank expects the money to be there for a while longer than in a current account.

These days they just rely on the much tapped vein of customer inertia. Besides banks don't need the savings to anchor loans and we are in a sustained period of negligible interest rates...

I don't understand anybody who lets their money rot at 0.01% when you can open an account in 5 minutes over the net these days, something which would take a lot less time and money than launching a spurious TDA prosecution against the banks....

Of course they aren't treasure vaults guarded by government heavies who will ensure you get your treasure back even if a big dragon melts it all with its fiery breath, but even the laziest customer gets that benefit regardless, and for the bargain price of free.

I don't understand anybody who lets their money rot at 0.01% when you can open an account in 5 minutes over the net
these days

I'm going back a decade when dealing with my, and my wife's elderly parents with power of attorney. They had substantial cash sums, partly from the sales of their homes, which were being used to fund their residential care homes. They had a traditional view of money, so only wished it to be held in Bank accounts (not on the stock exchange). Their traditional branch "savings" accounts paid virtually nothing - i.e. they were relying on the Bank they had used all their lives to give them a fair deal. Not a chance! So, with their agreement, I sought out Internet accounts paying reasonable amounts of interest. However many of these refused to open accounts with power of attorney. So it was a struggle, which took a lot longer than 5 minutes, to find sufficient suitable accounts into which I tried to avoid depositing more than the protected amount.
I suspect there are a lot of elderly people out there, who do not have family looking after their finances,

who lets their money rot at 0.01%

In my youth Banks were considered to be models of probity. Now they seem happy to let their customers' money "rot".

scotia wrote:In my youth Banks were considered to be models of probity. Now they seem happy to let their customers' money "rot".

Banks were businesses then and they are businesses now. The world has changed, but that has not.

bruncher wrote:Well yes, but they are also not called deposit accounts - remember those? Were they purely for storage, or were they savings accounts (i.e. with added interest) by another name?

A deposit account is a savings account that does not give membership of a mutual institution where the money is placed, such as a building society. Where it is not mutual, the distinction is not important.

DrBunsenHoneydew wrote:A deposit account is a savings account that does not give membership of a mutual institution where the money is placed, such as a building society. Where it is not mutual, the distinction is not important.

Looking at Lloyds Bank website they use the term deposit account for fixed term accounts available to businesses and 'private banking'. The term savings in used for accounts available to individuals.

The best deals currently are monthly savings account paying about 5% - I'm in the Nationwide version. Good but limited to £250 per month, and runs for a year so you have to remember to close the account and start again otherwise you're automatically moved to a 0.1% 'savings account'. You need a linked current account.