Halifax offers 10% fixed for a year on their RegularSaver. If you have £5000 or more to invest then they'll pay 12%!

http://www.halifax.co.uk/savings/clp/Regul...FXSAVEWS1130001

They are keen to bolster their liquidity clearly. Worth a punt or avoid?

Regular saver accounts are tosh.

10% is 10% - Why are they tosh?

If you have more than £5000 to invest then you get 12%! Nothing tosh about that, unless I am not reading the information properly.

The difference I see between this regular saver and others is 'Your Regular Saver account remains open, the interest rate applicable at the time is fixed for another year and you simply continue to save.'

Is it going to be difficult to get this thing to stop after the year is up?

One thing to note is that no withdrawals are allowed over the 12 month period. The introduction also states that this account will remain open for continuation of monthly payments at whatever the prevailing rate. I hope you have the option of closing it after the 12 month term.

No problem with. Just nominate another account to pay the total amount into at the end of the one year term. I should point out that the headline 10% is in actual fact 4.2%. If you save £500 a month for the term you will have saved £6k plus interest. The interest you will get on the £6k after a year will be about £240 or about 4.2% (all figures aprrox)

Not quite as good as it looks.

Firstly, as with all regular saver accounts you cannot just dump £6k in the account and earn 12% in a year or £720. No, No, No

You can only put in a max of £500 per month, meaning £6k has to be dripped in giving an average balance of £3k over the year and interest of roughly £360

Meanwhile, if you had £6k you would have to put it in another of Halifax's designated accounts, where it would earn some interest until transferred over the months to the better paying account.

Halifax list 5 holding accounts.

2 of these 'Gauranteed Saver' and 'saver reward' penalise you if you make more than 4 withdrawals, rendering it useless for monthly transfers!
'Instant saver' only pays 1.72% for £6k while you wait for all money to be transferred
'premuim savings direct' only pays 3.11% while you wait for all money to be transferred.

The best option (or rather only real) option is to open a 'web saver' account which pays 4.41%

Assuming you dump 6k in a web saver account and 500 is transferred per month, so that by the 12th month all is now in the regular savings account and none is left in the web saver account, you would earn approx £132 in interest from the web saver account and £360 from the regular saver account - a total of £492 or a return of 8.2% on your £6k.

But tax is due on this, so take 20% off and you have 6.56%.

The Egg cash ISA pays over 6%, so if you have less than £3600 to save there is little difference.

12% looks good in headlines but at the end of the day this is hardly any better than other deals.

I was helping my girlfriend set one of these accounts up yesterday. I think if you read through the terms and conditions, you can't make any withdrawls but you can at any point close the account, get all of your money back and they will pay any intrest that was due at that point.

12% on the deposits you make up to £500.

They're suitable for people who don't have much money, but for STR'ers or people with a lot of money hanging around they're not.

I'm STR and yet set one of these up today - the main reason was I have a halifax account and so it was super easy. Second reaoson is I am struggling to spread my money around. I'm 40% tax payer, so returns aren't great. I have set up a websaver with £6000, so of £500 a month into the regular saver. I didn't realise 12% was on offer - I will give them a call.

Most of my money is cash - in instant access savings accounts. I also have 2 issues of NS&I index linked certs, 15K in each. And i'm now tracking gold spot prices, and am going to put a chunk into coins as a hedge if i see it drop back down to $850ish/ounce.

A 10% regular saver IS a good thing to have.

Your first £500 payment (assuming you save the max amount). That £500 will earn 10% Gross Per Annum for 12 months (not bad !)

Your second £500 payment will earn 10% Gross P.A. for 11 months (not bad !)

Your third £500 will earn 10% Gross P.A. for 10 months (not bad !)

etc, etc.

Simple, eh ?

It`s OK to argue that your £6K will not really earn 10% over the 12 months, but you are missing the point. Pay the £500 payments from an account that`s paying 6%, the £500 stops earning 6%, and starts earning 10%. Your average balance in the 6% account for the year will be £3k, the 10% account will average £3k. So your average interest rate is now 8% on the whole £6k (if I`ve got my maths right). For some, this might not seem to be worth the hassle, but you will end up with more £££, and that can`t be a bad thing.

that'll be a good mortgage deal this time next year

I went a bit berserk last night and opened one of the Halifax 10% accounts and one of the Alliance & Leicester 8.5% current accounts as a 'feeder' account. It's 'only' 8.5% for a year on balances up to £2500 but a hell of a lot better than the bog-standard 0.1% current account I've been using for the last 10 years.

I considered the 12% option on the Halifax account but the requirements of £5000 held in another Halifax account don't appear to make it worthwhile...

These regular savers are brilliant, if you can manage your finances! They are drip feed accounts, so if you're funding the cash from savings you are still earning interest on the dosh yet to go into the reg saver.

Secondly, plan it right!!!

The terms state your payment has to be before the 28th of each month, so make sure you open your regular saver at the end of the month before this date (i.e. today). Immediately send £500 into the account, then change your standing order to the 1st of each month. Then the next £500 will go in. If you do this today, you can get £1k in within 5days - earning 10% AER for the remainder of the year!

The 12% rate is pants due to terms!

I was in BOS today and the 5k you deposit into another account gets 12% too...

so your regular saver gets 12% and your 5k gets 12%...

surely thats unbeatable although low chips

Are you sure?

I don't think that is the case; it doesn't say so on the website. If you did get 12% on the £5k MSE posters would be all over it! I'd also stick a whole lot more than £5k in there too!

If you have 40k in a 5.5% aer account, is it worth spreading this around and drip feeding into some of these 10% aer accounts or just leave it in one place collecting interest on the whole 40k?

Welcome scrappycocco!

You could do a few regular savers, if you can be bothered with setting them up for the extra cash you get. But I would look at the numerous fixed savers now at >7%AER!

This is definitely not the case. I was considering opening up a Halifax regular saver account but the 12 percent interest rate only applies to the monthly deposits (maximum £500). In order to get this 12 per cent you must also deposit at least £5000 in a 'nominated account' and the interest rates on these are not particularly good. In the light of this I think better deals can be found elsewhere.

Anone know of a better deal for regular savings account?