Paul Lewis
SAVINGS INTEREST / MONEY NEWS
If you prefer to have your savings in cash rather than investments, then make them work for you rather than your bank. How? By earning as much interest as possible…
illustrations ELIOT WYATT
The older we get, the more we like to have our savings somewhere we can see – or even admire! – them. Cash may not grow as much in the long term as money that is invested, but at least it won’t go down in value as investments can – and indeed do, from time to time. And the older you are the less time there is to sit out a market fall – or even a crash, as some economists have suggested may happen in the not-too-distant future.
But if you like cash it is important to remember that it is very lazy. Left to itself it will sit around earning as little as it can. The banks take advantage of this laziness. Many of the savings accounts offered by the big high-street banks pay as little interest as the banks can get away with. There is an estimated £1 trillion sitting in accounts paying less than half the amount that can be earned in the top-paying accounts. And, believe it or not, nearly £300 billion is sitting in bank accounts that pay out zero – not a penny piece.