Coronavirus And Your Savings

With a drop in interest rates during this pandemic, you may be worrying about whats happening to your hard earned cash in savings accounts or whats happening with mortgages. I've put together a little light information about rates and given you a few ideas for if you want to move any savings you may have, to make the most of your hard earned! Hope it helps.

man at laptop

The Bank of England has cut the base rate (The Bank of Englands Official borrowing rate) in response to the coronavirus pandemic, reducing it from 0.25% to 0.1%. So in short this will affect everything from Mortgages to Investments. Mortgages

Tracker mortgages will drop in rate (yay if you have one of those) but fixed mortgages won't change, so if you can ditch it its worth seeing if you'd benefit from trying to. Variable rate mortgages will also see a drop in rate too. It is still worth checking with your lender on where you are at and the changes that might affect you.

Savings Savings rates aren't great generally but some fab ones popped up over the last year with rates like 1.40% which was a nice boost if you grabbed that plus the bonus when Marcus launched a while back. Now, unfortunately they're falling further (Marcus have dropped from 1.40% down to 1.20%)It's worth noting that if you have a fixed rate this won't change.

It's not all doom and gloom though, you can still get some good (ish) rates if you want to gain the most from your saved pennies during this strange time.

Here are the best savings accounts I've found at the moment:

Marcus - 1.20% - (Easy Access)

This is still one of the top rates out there for easy access savings, even with the recent drop: Currently, 1.20% (or a 1 year fixed rate at 1.45% if you can lock your cash in for a year see below) and you can open it with just £1. Open online in less than 10 mins - I've done it, this is so easy even my mum did it.

Moneybox - 1.45% - (95-day Notice Account)

I love Moneybox, I've invested with them since they started disrupting the robo-investing market. They've widened their portfolio into savings and pensions now and this rate is hard to beat in the current market if you can do the giving notice thing 95 days before you need the cash. Note that Moneybox is an app so you sign up and manage your savings via an app (its really nicely done with lots of extra info and helpful tips)

Marcus - 1.45% - (1 Year Fixed Rate)

Like above, mega easy to open and super simple user experience. I would note here that you can only pay in money within the first 14 days (as many deposits up to £250,000 as you like) but only in those first 14 days)

Saga - 1.20% - (Easy Access) Same rate as Marcus with a 1.20% (variable) rate but with an added bonus rate of 0.20% gross (fixed) for the first 12 months. Note: A number of banks have relaxed their rules on how you can access your money in fixed saving accounts, so check directly with your banks if you need to get to your money sooner. Also the banks I've listed here are UK-regulated, which means you get £85,000 per person protection if the bank does go out of business.

More info on these fab websites:

Which & MoneySavingExpert

#banking #savings #covidsavings #moneymatters #lookafteryourmoney #themoneymel