Before the financial crisis, around 90 percent of current accounts paid interest. Now, only two thirds of accounts offer interest. With the bank rate sitting at 0.5 percent, even in those cases where banks offer something on a current account, the return is negligible.
Why the obsession with bank deposits and interest rates? My Australia Fund - my fifteen hundred quid that currently resides in NatWest - just keeps on losing value. I need every penny, and it irritates me enormously to think that I am being ripped off for the sake of keeping mortgage rates down.
Come on, Monetary Policy Committee, help me out a little. I need to get back to Marvelous Melbourne. Bondi is also calling me. And I never did get to Alice Springs.
5 comments:
Try investing your money rather than leaving it uselessly sitting in a bank account.
Productively employed capital will generate a return; nobody ever got rich by returns on bank deposit accounts.
Why not open an account in Aussie dollars at, say, ANZ? It'd be a decent hedge against the cost of going there next time.
Hedging? With my limited resources?
But if your resources are limited and you're very keen to get to Oz, hedging is more important to you than to someone richer. If the exchange rate moves against Mr Richman, he can shrug it off - but it might cost you your trip.
I'll grant you that it might have been better to open such an account a few years back, but there we are.
I think an aussie bank acccount is a great idea for the interest but given the awful exchnmage rate at the moment I think you'd be better off skeeping it in stirling and waiting to see if the exchange rate goes up.
If you're moving the whole lot into dollars in one go, use an onl;ine exhange house where you can get an account and you'll get a btter rate than through your bank.
I looooove Melbourne!
J
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