Finance expert Martin Lewis has urged people to use a trick to boost their savings - which can involve using just £1. On the ITV Money Show Live this week the Money Saving Expert revealed that there were a wide variety of tips and tricks to boost your savings.
One key point was to check your savings account. Some are known as ‘zombie’ or legacy savings accounts - meaning that the original interest rate which was offered has lapsed, so any money sitting in there is actually losing value.
A tip involved how to get a better interest rate at HSBC. Martin explained: ”HSBC’s online bonus saver pays 3% and up to £10,000. Here’s a trick, the terms say you can get this account whether you’ve got a current account or a savings account.
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"Well its flex savings account allows you to open it with £1. So you can put £1 in HSBC’s flex saving account, which has a very poor rate and that will give you access to this account what pays 3% and you can put up to £10,000 in.”
Speaking to viewers watching from home, he said: “Let’s stop the savings rip-off,” adding: “UK base rates have been rising since December and are likely to rise again this Thursday. But while variable mortgage rates have shot up in the blink of an eye, we’ve yet to see most savings rates rise at all.”
Martin then went on to explain how savers should be earning at least two per cent of interest via the minimum rate, and listed a number of accounts that provide such rates - including products from Marcus, Saga, Yorkshire Building Society, Barclays and HSBC. However, he also warned of a “big downer” attached to saving money.
He said: "All savings in reality are losings. Which means even in the top paying fixed accounts your savings are not growing as quickly as prices are rising. We cannot prevent it, but we can mitigate it. So it’s probably more important now than ever that you get the top rate."
He added: “Forget riding the market. Take the fire and the passion you’ve got hopefully from listening to me right now tell you that you are being ripped off and just go and sort it now.”
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