Don’t fall into any of these saving traps

I’ve been caught out quite often, most recently by Halifax and Santander.

It is a good idea to make a not of expiry dates of preferential interest rates, but that will not help when new accounts appear and the old ones attract a paltry interest rate.

If there is any bank or building society that never does this, please share this information.

I signed up to an 8% regular saver account with First Direct, you can only pay in £300 a month, but if I miss one, then the interest rate drops to 0.1 or 0.2 %. When I set it up I made sure the account had enough to cover the entire year, only to get a phone call 2 days later saying I can’t use that account to make payments, doh. Strange how it let me do it in the first place though.

I set the 8% regular saver account with First Direct, with a direct debit so I never forget – What I have done is to keep my Current Account ‘full’ at the beginning of the month – then transfer any surplus out into a savings account as it arrives. The problem for me is the requirement for instant access, .

I see where you are coming from Russell but an email would not cost much – it is free apart from the cost of paying someone to write the original text. At a very minimum, I would expect my (largely tax payer owned) bank to mention that my savings account bonus had disappeared when they next wrote to me on another subject. As it happens I do “diary” things like bonus termination dates – but my father wasn’t too hot on stuff like that when he was in his 80s – as I found out when I was sorting out his estate!

Master Limited Partnerships: (MLP’s) give incomes of 10% or above with no work involved.

They are a bit like REIT’s but invest in things like oil pipe lines etc.

They return between 6% and 15% a year tax free based on the price of the shares.

The returns rise every year in general.

The shares are not volatile ad tend to go down when general interest rates rise and fall when general interest rates rise.

But you would invest in these shares for high rising tax free income not capital gains.

You only pay tax when you sell the shares – basicaly you buy them and never sell just pass them on to someone when you die.

These are USA product so you would need to look at the US tax and the UK tax (There is an agreement between the two countries.) But better to get advice from a tax consultant.

Typical examples of these shares are:

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP – NYSE Code KMP

Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, LP – NYSE Code BWP

I feel that it is totally unacceptable that banks are allowed to drop interest rates (or remove annual bonuses as it’s now called), without prior notice. I have recently had to inform both my father and an elderly friend, that the interest rates they thought they had on their ISAs were currently running at 0.1%. They thought the rates were still the same as when they opened the ISAs (one of them about 5 years ago) and didn’t realise they could move them to a different ISA – even within the same bank or BS. I think all banks and BSs should have to pay back pensioners for the interest they have missed out on.

I just been the victim of what I consider to be a con trick by Halifax. I had a 3 year cash ISA with them which was to mature in June this year. I had a letter from them in May warning me of the maturity date and asking me to return a form to them saying what I would like to do.
They gave interest rates for 1,2,3,4,5 year terms for reinvesting, and I chose the 2 year term which was at 3.70%AER. When I heard from them that my matured amount had been put into a 2 year term ISA they gave the interest rate as 3.25%.
Upon ringing them I was told that interest rates had dropped – but I consider that I should have been told what the new rate was before they took my money and tied it up. If you are going to purchase anything else and the price suddenly shoots up you expect to be informed before you purchase!