Let’s be honest, money is super tight right now whilst we’re not working and with the average savings rate now well below 1% across all the major banks, unless you’ve got squillions of pounds in the bank, you’re not going to earn a decent rate of interest on your money.
We found out today of a new scheme called Help To Save. It’s backed by the UK Government and allows you to save up to a maximum of £50.00 per month over a period of 4 years. At the end of years 2 and 4, you will receive 50% of whatever your highest balance was as a bonus.
So, for example, if you saved £50 per month over 2 years, you’ll have £1,200 in your pot. At the end of the first 2 years, the Help To Save scheme will give you a 50% bonus totalling £600.00! If you then saved an additional £800.00 between years 2 and 4, at the end of year 4 you’ll get an additional £400.00 bonus! We think that’s pretty cool, to be honest.
There are some eligibility criteria to get the Help To Save account and the main ones are that you must be receiving Universal Credit and/or Working Tax Credit, and your “income” on your last assessment period must be more than £604.59 per month. Unfortunately, if all you’re receiving right now is Universal Credit, it’s not classed as income, sorry 🙁
This is a great scheme to take advantage of RIGHT NOW! Even if you are only claiming Universal Credit in the short term until you can get back to work, you can still open the account with £1.00 and then have access to the bonuses long after you’ve stopped claiming for Universal Credit.
We think Help To Save is a great bonus scheme offered by the Government so to find out more and to sign up online, click here!