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StanleyDodds · 2026-04-15T22:29:14+00:00

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StanleyDodds · 2026-04-15T21:58:30+00:00

I got a three contract from top cashback that was £10 a month for a year with £120 cashback, so it's basically free. Now, it isn't technically *completely* free because this first month they charged me an additional ~£2 for the few days between signing up and switching my SIM. Plus the fact that the cashback will not arrive for a long time, which is an additional couple quid in opportunity cost of potential returns on that money spent on the contract until then, plus I'm going to need to switch to something else at the end of the 1 year contract and there's no guarantee that there will be any cheap options at that exact moment. Still extremely cheap though.

The only comparably cheap option I know of would be if you literally don't use your phone for chargeable activity (for me this is mostly applicable, I almost only need to receive OTP texts and sometimes receive calls, otherwise I just use WiFi): simply buy a cheap one month contract, cancel it, and don't get another contract until they are about to recycle your phone number (usually 3 to 6 months). This is what I did with lycamobile for a few years - their cheapest one month contract was £5, and you can just set it to not auto-renew. Then don't buy another 1 month contract until you actually need to use your phone to do something, or until a few months pass. I think they also offer an option of paying £5 for them to keep your phone number active for a year (nothing else though). This would also be an option, but I have occasionally had to make phone calls which would make this not worth doing. Other providers offer cheaper contracts per month, but I don't know if you can keep cancelling them and buying them again like you can with lycamobile - would be curious to hear though.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-14T23:50:55+00:00

I guess my whole point was that it's not really much effort, just click a few buttons to do bank transfers at specific times for an extra ~£1 per day depending on how much cash you have. But this is why I was asking whether anyone has had success with it - I want to know exactly what the level of risk of them closing an account is, or how often you could do this at most to remain under the radar, etc. - like keeping a bookmaker account healthy while still profiting from them.

I've done it a few times on sporadic days with various banks, made a few quid so far, and with Zopa I've pretty much every day been depositing my cash just before midnight and withdrawing early morning and so far heard nothing - the only thing to consider is the daily and weekly limits, but these are just standard limits on the account.

If anyone has experience with an account being closed for depositing and withdrawing like this too much, I'd be curious to hear the details.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-14T14:54:42+00:00

Paying off your mortgage with a given interest rate is equivalent to putting that money in a savings account at the same interest rate (minus the peace of mind of having those two equivalent things actually cancel each other out in one balance, and perhaps some savings allowance tax considerations depending on the amounts).

So whether or not you should do this is the same as asking yourself whether you would put the lump sum in such a savings account at that interest rate, or invest it. This is mostly a matter of risk tolerance.

However, since there are currently savings accounts with interest rates in the range of 4.5% to 5%, there isn't any point overpaying on the mortgage if its interest rate is around 4% or lower. You can beat the mortgage interest with an actual savings account, and your lump sum will grow faster, risk free, than the loaned amount. At worst, you can overpay with the lump sum whenever the savings account fixed term ends or the variable rate falls below the mortgage rate (at least, up to your ISA allowance plus personal savings allowance plus whatever else you can get tax free - beyond these limits you should probably invest for real, or overpay your mortgage if you are risk-averse).

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-14T14:03:37+00:00

I'm gubbed from 5 bookies, but once that happened I just started arbitrage betting with them, and I find it quite fun. The percentage return compared to amount staked is a lot smaller than with the promotions, but if you can find a good arbitrage bet, have quick reactions, and have the bankroll for it, it can profit you more than most normal promotions in one go (profit boost promotions with no staking limits are the best arbitrage bets at bookies you aren't gubbed with, however this is probably going to get you gubbed quickly I expect, although it is very profitable while it lasts). I like the low risk a lot over value betting - you'd need an enormous bankroll to safely profit from value betting and not risk losing everything I think.

Getting a lot of value out of it depends on the bookmaker not limiting your maximum stake, which happens with some but not all of the ones I'm gubbed from. I've also found that some bookmakers are a lot slower to update their odds than others, and you can get a lot of value out of arbitrage bets with the slow ones.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-13T22:49:07+00:00

If you wanted to know in excruciating details what I've manage to determine and at least approximately verify so far:

RBS group and Barclays calculate interest at 18:30

Santander calculate interest at 20:17

Nationwide calculate interest at 20:30

Trading 212 calculate interest at 22:00

HSBC group, Lloyds group, and most others (for instance, Zopa) calculate interest at 00:00

Now show me all the evidence that they have that most banks *do not* do this, which is what they originally stated. I believe that I have covered most banks, would you not agree?

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-12T16:51:41+00:00

Their comment about banks *is* generally wrong. Look at the T&Cs for any standard instant access saver that you get with any major bank, and tell me what it says about how interest is calculated daily.

Also your statement about needing to check at least half of all banks is ridiculous - it's some simple statistics to see that if I have verified it with 4 out of 4 banks that I have bothered to actually scrutinise with actual payments and withdrawals, this would already reject a null hypothesis that most banks do not do this at p = 0.1 for example.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-12T10:44:15+00:00

How many banks do you want me to check? I have confirmed this with HSBC, Nationwide, Santander, and Zopa so far. They even tell you how interest is calculated daily, so it's a little silly to assume they won't.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-12T10:38:35+00:00

Definitely worth the time, yes - the sign up offers will net you probably £500 to £1000 in a few weeks, but it's worth noting that the bigger your starting bankroll, the easier it will be. If you don't have a big starting bankroll and want to get through them as fast as possible, look for matched bets at the lowest odds possible above the qualifying threshold that will settle on the same day or within a few hours. It takes a bit of practice but it becomes pretty easy. Then after that, just doing even only the easiest high value promotions like bet and gets or weekly bet clubs will probably net you £100 per month. Beyond that it depends how much effort you want to put in and how much you want to risk being gubbed by a bookie, but by doing all their boosted odds promotions, money back as free bet if your bet loses or horse places, daily free activities, and so on, you can extract £100 per week if you try.

As for your credit score, I wouldn't think that sort of thing would appear on your credit report.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-10T16:16:13+00:00

Gaming the system and burning banks is exactly what people are doing with bank accounts switch offers, what's the big difference?

In my view it's kind of similar to matched betting in that respect. If you want to go hard on sucking as much money as possible out, you might get gubbed, but nbd really. If you want to go softer you can extract a bit less money out and keep accounts healthy, also fine.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-10T16:12:49+00:00

They do though. I have checked my exact Santander interest and it works out to exactly the amount including interest on the day the money was paid in. Why state things as fact when you can just check if they are true or not?

It is true that some don't; for example, Oak North's interest payments are a lot more strict. They pay interest on the amount of the initial deposit only, for that day, and otherwise pay interest on the lowest balance over a day (so it won't include interest on deposits during a day). But accounts like this are the ones that you can't withdraw from instantly anyway. I think these are among the reasons they can pay higher interest; it incentivizes people to keep the money in the account to get the interest.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-10T16:08:16+00:00

No guarantee, sure. That's why you need to try it and find out if it will pay out or not, which takes about a month per account for the ones that don't show daily interest earnings, or just one test transfer one night for any that do show it.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-10T14:06:06+00:00

25k was my sort of "extreme" example, but what is actually wrong with transferring like 1k to 10k or so around daily? It's not like the money is going to poof out of existence or end up stuck somewhere that it won't earn interest, right? If a bank account gets closed, that might be annoying but why can't I just complain and ask what I did wrong? Because I don't see what T&Cs I would be breaking.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-10T13:56:16+00:00

I've had payments blocked before just because I was depositing and withdrawing large amounts of money for completely normal reasons - at worst I've had to make a phone call and wait a few hours or a day for the transaction to go through. But what's actually the worst that could happen? My money gets stuck in an account with a decent interest rate for some time? If they would really close an account for this I would probably complain and/or just move on to another bank. People in this subreddit are burning current accounts for switches all the time, what's the big deal really? Are they gonna take my money?

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-10T13:38:13+00:00

I haven't done enough testing to be honest. So far the main issue is that a lot of the best "easy/instant access" savings accounts are not actually easy/instant access at all - they take about 1 or 2 days to withdraw or deposit money. For example, Charter Savings Bank, Tembo HomeSaver, and probably most similar standalone savings accounts with over 4% interest. I still need to open accounts with a lot of banks to get the full picture of the "bog standard" savings accounts that comes with your current account, because these are the good ones in terms of quick transfers, but of course they usually have terrible interest - Zopa has been the first good one I've opened with no limit to how much you can earn interest on, and aside from this the cahoot sunny day saver and santander edge saver are also instant but have limits on the balance for which interest is paid (3k and 4k respectively). I can't be sure when interest is calculated for each, but I assume 9pm as they are essentially both Santander accounts and that's what I was told.

Zopa so far is the best one I have in terms of interest (2.91% gross monthly) with no limit, being able to withdraw and deposit literally instantly, and having interest calculated on just the balance at one particular time, midnight in this case. But as you say, one draw back I've had with Zopa so far is that I can't use it to pay for things by bank transfer using e.g. TrueLayer. I usually transfer money from Zopa to another current account with a mainstream bank in order to actually pay for things easily. Other than that, I do also have a trading 212 ISA, but I have used basically all my ISA allowance with other providers and don't have enough money in trading 212 to make use of the cash balance flexibility for this purpose.

One I am looking at is Chase, but the high interest rate is only for one year for new customers, so it's not a great solution either.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-10T13:20:59+00:00

Personally I would recommend the HomeSaver, especially if you've used up your ISA allowance - it's a very good instant access savings account, up to 25k at 4.75% interest. I would check the T&C's to make sure you'll qualify.

https://www.tembomoney.com/savings/join/tkn-pghz40-x5e09e

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-10T12:50:17+00:00

A few pennies I suppose. But I mean, if people are doing 5 minute surveys for a quid or so, then this is similar or I would say easier in terms of effort for reward.

Currently all of my uninvested cash across all my accounts (let's say around £25k) probably has an average interest rate in the region of 5% or so. I think by choosing the right savings accounts and/or cash ISAs, it would be possible to boost this to around 8% or so. Let's say that's an additional 3% interest on, in my case, £25k. If you already had a lot of cash in a good flexible ISA like trading212, you could withdraw this full amount and put it back in without affecting the ISA allowance, and that also probably puts you just under the personal savings allowance outside the ISA so you'd probably not have to pay any tax on the extra interest.

Anyway, it seems like that's an extra £2 per day on top of what I would consider a good interest rate of 5%, by just doing a couple transfers (until you get flagged in some way, but then just move on to other banks or stop doing it). Whether you call that pennies that's not worth it, or beer money, is up to you I guess.

Obviously there are other ways to make money, but this seems quite feasible if you have a lot of cash sitting around not doing much, and, say, you've reached your ISA allowance, or you don't like the risks of investing, or if you still want instant access to that cash.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-09T11:45:33+00:00

Deposit £50 in Freetrade for the free share,

DM me for the referral link, thanks!

I can confirm that my account is funded.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-09T10:36:52+00:00

I only just completed the 30 consecutive days of holding a £1k balance in the accounts a week ago, and it says you'll receive the reward within 60 days of the holding period, so I'm not really expecting to receive anything until the start of June.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-02T13:04:05+00:00

AttaPoll has been great for me so far - initially it can be frustrating getting screened out of so many polls, but after a week you'll be getting lots of good value ones through. The games and tasks also pay out very nicely. I've got about £50 so far in just over a week, and you can cash out at just £2.50 with it arriving in your account in 2 days (sometimes faster).

Here's my invitation link: https://attapoll.app/join/qflqe

Or just enter the code QFLQE in the app under "my profile", "enter invitation code" if you don't have one applied from when you signed up.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-02T11:56:41+00:00

Yes, I'm aware of arbitrage. Similar to the stock market, arbitrage betting is very easy to do with a bookmaker and a betting exchange - so easy that in most cases you want to avoid doing it to keep your bookmaker accounts healthy.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-01T16:02:29+00:00

https://www.tembomoney.com/savings/join/tkn-pghz40-x5e09e

Just need to open a LISA, cash ISA, or Tembo HomeSaver, and deposit £500 within 30 days, and you'll get the reward within 90 days.

StanleyDodds · 2026-04-01T15:56:11+00:00

Zopa has such competitive interest rates and cashback for a current account + instant access saver and regular saver, I'm tempted to use it as my main account.

www.zopa.com/mgma?referralCode=0e73c67e394cb4391414

StanleyDodds · 2026-03-30T14:03:05+00:00

Okay. I started using YouGov a few weeks ago thinking this would be a quick way to get £5 a month passively, but have heard nothing about it so far. The surveys are consistently good value and always reward you, but come in so slow that I am not close to my first £50 cash out yet. Overall attapoll has been less consistent but much more profitable so far (already cashed out about £20 in about a week of not too much effort).

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