The Lemon Fool

Just when some savings rates were going up, I received a nice email from my ex-building society, Halifax, now part of Lloyds:

What we've sent to your Halifax Online Banking inbox:
Subject Date
The interest rate on your savings account is going down soon 03 Sep 2021

I haven't logged on for yonks but the rate was pretty close to zero. I wonder what it is now.

A few years ago I transferred most of it to another account to be used for my AJBell ISA.

I was made to jump through a few hoops, and the guy couldn't understand why I preferred to get a minimum of 5% apr, rather than -3% (RPI was 3%).

How on earth do these banks survive???


Steve

stevensfo wrote:I was made to jump through a few hoops, and the guy couldn't understand why I preferred to get a minimum of 5% apr, rather than -3% (RPI was 3%).

How on earth do these banks survive???

Inertia. Plus the fact that people think switching accounts is more hassle than it is.

BJ

stevensfo wrote:A few years ago I transferred most of it to another account to be used for my AJBell ISA.
Steve

I did the same as well, several years ago, as soon as savings rates plummted
Anyone saving money now is just seeing it eroded by inflation
Sure you still need a 3-6 months income for the "rainy day" scenario and if you are lucky enough to have that
anything over can be better invested than in savings accounts
I think the days of the traditional bank on the high street are numbered
We used to have 8 or 9, we now have ONE

Yep, I got out of Nationwide and NS&I a while back due to poor rates. I've still got a Halifax Help to Buy ISA which pays 1% but capped at £12k so I have suspended regular payments to it (and must transfer out the small balance over the limit, as it gets the square root of eff all interest)
The cash from N'wide and NS&I ended up with Paragon, who have been very easy to deal with (so far) with reasonable rates - 1 Year fixed rate ISA 0.85% currently , or 0.91% for non-ISA
I got evicted from the Investec High5 account (obviously they couldn't afford to keep it running) so still have a dollop to 'invest'