with a decent return but also the ability to take money out/put in over the course of the year

judging by your criteria, I would suggest a bank account

was hoping for something a bit more specific

Cash ISA – check moneysupermarket for the best rates.

Buy oil

Do you already have a bank account ? If so, who’s it with ?

with a decent return

but also the ability to take money out/put in over the course of the year

Normally pretty mutually exclusive criteria!

gambling man says premium bonds.

550 quid so far this year(as in january to march)

100% down to luck…. i reckon its karma for picking up a hitch hiker in the pishing rain on the way down alpe dhuez and then taking up a misrable hypothermic looking cyclist id met out riding one day – and knew was staying at the top back up :d

no risk fsa backed account http://www.pnbint.com/cash_isa.aspx or risk averse open a shares isa and play the market

HSBC

Nip down to Tesco and buy ten grands worth of scratch cards. You can’t lose*

* I’m not actually a financial advisor

Bah, they don’t have any value-added accounts unfortunately.

Cash ISA – check moneysupermarket for the best rates.

Trouble is, the best rate you’re going to get at the moment is 2%.

If you have a mortgage, overpayment may be the best option. I think a lot of mortgage companies give you access to overpayments if you need the cash.

Normally pretty mutually exclusive criteria!

Not so. Lots of funds allow you to buy and sell at whim. Dealing charges apply and if its an ISA (as all of your first £15k should be) then ISA limits apply.

overpayment may be the best option

Depends on circumstances really. Paying off any interest bearing debts is a given of course but I have borrowed money against my mortgage before when rates where incredibly low and invested it. Slight risk though !

A month in a Mexican brothel, your pockets would be empty but the old w@nk bank would be topped up for the rest of your (probably shortened) life

I accept paypal gift. I offer an excellent return, but I must warn that your house my be at risk if you are not completely satisfied.

Trouble is, the best rate you’re going to get at the moment is 2%.

I terms of access and interest Santander current accounts give you more interest than an ISA at present don’t they?

If you want regular access to the cash throughout the year then your best bet will be a regular bank account. Even and cash ISA might not be appropriate as the limit is on the total invested into the account not the net amount over the year.

For *some* risk, RateSetter, ZOPA or similar. You can ask to put cash on monthly deposit (and put some on years deposit). Reckon that gets you around – 3-4-5 % return, for some risk.

… premium bonds have, recently, been shocking return for me. Fed up – not even close to 0.5% I think in past they were better, but unless you have surplus cash, there are better returns to be had. Mind you that’s as close as I get to ‘gambling’ (unless you count the stock market and even then I steer clear of pure gambles usually.

At some risk…. I would (and am seriously tempted to) buy Euros. The euro needs to rise to achieve parity with the rest of the world and it was onky 2 years ago that it was 20% higher than it is now. Would not have to rise much to be a better return than any UK bank and it might happen in days not years (make over 2% on your money that is). Of course, it could all come crashing down too 🙂

As an example you could have made 1.5% in the past week had you bought Euros then and sold them today

The OP seems to imply that short-term value falls could be a problem so anything riskier than a savings account is probably not appropriate. I invest in funds but any money I want to access quickly stays as cash.

If you can meet the criteria (pay in £500 a month and have at least two direct debits) then a santander 123 account will give you 3%.

What about investing the same amount without the need for access?, any recommendations?.

Look into an ISA. There are some available which are invested (I.e. Stocks shares etc) with limited risk and smoothed returns, e.g. They average out the volatility and give you the average of it rather than seeing it jumping about. On my way! even tell you in advance what they think the average might be, you should expect around 5.5% net from something like this. Taking withdrawals is no issue, or hold some back for whatever you’re likely to want out of it.

ISA allowance almost always makes sense to use up doe savings first given it rolls up tax free.

I just whacked my ISA money into Jupiter UK Growth

If you can meet the criteria (pay in £500 a month and have at least two direct debits) then a santander 123 account will give you 3%.

But you’ll pay tax on that too won’t you?

Bah, they don’t have any value-added accounts unfortunately.

If you signed up for their premium account you used to get access to an 8% savings account (we had one until a couple of years ago). Had to leave the money for a year if I recall though.

BG.

Why would you consider anything other than a fund. Put it in a Fundsmith ISA and you can access it anytime you want and have pretty good chance of getting about 16% pa. Why would anyone consider a cash ISA with this level of growth and accessibility?
Not meant as a short term investment but that doesnt matter.

suggest that if you’ve used up your ISA tax allowance, then funding circle offers a half-decent return and is very addictive too. Taxable returns, of course.

Santander 123 for 3% gross better than any isa I could find.

Transfer in £500, pay 2 direct debit and transfer the remainder of the £500 back to your other account. Pays cashback on the 2 direct debit for my council tax and gas/electric on top. Costs £2 per month for the account.

we are just in the process of sorting out house deposit out short term – we’ve already got one santandar account which is really good for cashback on all the household items. We will shortly be setting up a second (you can have 3 in total if you are a couple)

the credit card is worth looking at too, I’ll be switching my cashback credit card to santandars shortly.

salary will still be paid into primary account, and 2 payments go out to personal and joint santandar accounts.

there is an article on the guardian website about the best return you can make on 74k via current accounts.

We also got a £100 or £150 when we switched – not sure if it is still an offer.

Why would anyone consider a cash ISA with this level of growth and accessibility?

Because the value of your investment can go down as well as up :/

Just because Mr Smith is a big name doesn’t mean he’ll call everything right the world economy won’t go tits-up

I made some money buying and selling cryptocurrency recently. Namely bitcoins. They are very unstable though, I bought at £160/1btc and sold 12 days later at ~£195/1btc. Equates to about 15-20% return on my investment.

Because the value of your investment can go down as well as up :/

Of course it can however the title of the thread has the word “invest” in it. Not “save” Saving (and I include cash ISA’s in this) guarantee derisory returns and with careful management and the use of the Interweb the risks with this or any other fund are much smaller than the days when we used to send in a form then wait for quarterly updates telling us that we had lost 10%

Premium Bonds.

My dad invested 30k into Premium bonds and 30k in a bank. The return from the premium bonds monthly draw wins is, according to his very comprehensive spread sheet is around 10 times what he got from the bank.
I have around 20k in there and get a £25 cheque around 8 times a year, with the possibility of winning a million every month. It takes about a week to get money out if you need it.

@Jeff

£200 pa on a £20000 is actually very poor. Even an account offering 5% would offer around 5 times that. If your Dad is happy with the return it really says his other returns are dire.
Of course if you strike lucky then great but I would rather go with something more predicatable

You can get 5% on cash in current accounts at TSB (tho’ limited to 2x£2k) and at Nationwide (£2.5k for 1yr). Also there are 6% regular savings accounts to be had from First Direct, HSBC and Halifax, although Ts+Cs apply. All subject to tax though.

Overpaying on your mortgage is never a bad option as the savings are tax efficient, but you may struggle to borrow back the cash in the current environment.

Forget cash ISAs, the rates are barely better than inflation. And premium bonds are a con trick.

Individual shares can be highly volatile over the short term, so this would be a pure gamble.

Funds are more diversified, but with stock markets all near all-time highs there are few tempting options for a short term punt. Fundsmith (as mentioned above) is hugely and justly popular and has done very well up to now, but it simply can’t continue upwards at the same rate it has been. Personally, I would (and have!) put it in something that’s predominantly Euro-denominated, like Threadneedle European Select. Why? QE has caused the Euro to be sold heavily meaning you get more for your £, and QE should also tend to fuel asset price rises in the short to medium term. No guarantees tho’!

Careful with the headline regular saver rates: if they cap what you put in at the start or each month, the apr over the year works out barely more than half the advertised rate since you have so little in the account to start with. Plus tax, too.

6% looked at that way seems rather less tempting if you have a lump sum rather than spare cash each month

Euro-denominated, like Threadneedle European Select. Why? QE has caused the Euro to be sold heavily meaning you get more for your £, and QE should also tend to fuel asset price rises in the short to medium term. No guarantees tho’!

Good call as is Axa Biotech which has shown good growth over the last year.

but it simply can’t continue upwards at the same rate it has been

Why? Annualised growth from inception (from memory) is around 16%. Not earth shattering but good. I have about 80% of my fund investment in this (although its not a massive amount in total) The rationale is to buy and hold “good” stocks not chase quick returns. I will diversify more with some new investments I would be surprised if it didnt keep on growing at double digit.

Premium Bonds haven’t come up trumps for me. I’m terrible when it comes to shuffling any spare money around, and still have any savings in an old Halifax account which now doesn’t pay interest, but does allow easy access!

I think I have about 2.5k in Premium Bonds which I bought around ten or fifteen years ago. I’ve had a few ‘wins’ of £25, and possibly one or two £50 ones, but I would say they’ve paid out fewer than ten times, and it’s not unusual to go for years without seeing any return.

Having said that, maybe one day I’ll get around to buying some more…