Frozen Ice

[gothick]

...of course, one of the bonuses of the web is that it allows you to easily put a large chunk of your savings into an Icelandic savings bank. A Icelandic bank which, ironically, has now had its UK assets frozen by our government, after it collapsed.

I think it could be a while before I get a large chunk of my savings back, if I'm lucky enough to get them back at all. And I was just about to draw out a chunk of money to use for share dealing in this nice volatile stock market we've got...

Meh.

Comments

[gothick-matt.livejournal.com]

I chose them from the top three recommended savings accounts a couple of years ago; they were paying a good rate of interest and were recommended by decent sources like the Motley Fool, among others. Their internet banking interface also worked better than many others, which was actually one of the reasons I chose them over one of the others (ING, from what I remember), whose registration process wouldn't even work in my web browser...

[kaveypie.livejournal.com]

Aaah, sucks even more when you're in the boat because you were being proactive about finding a good deal and good interface rather than just leaving it where it is.

I am particularly pleased that our savings are split between various institutions now as no account contains anywhere near that limit of what government will guarantee on savings if there are problems/ collapse.

Some poor guy has all his savings in one of these, which is 75k or something, and government only guarantees a bit of that!

[gothick-matt.livejournal.com]

It's not dreadful. I have some liquid savings left, in something that should be as close to completely safe as you can get. And the bulk of my money is in my flat, which is a pretty good place for it to be, albeit in a very non-liquid form.

[gothick-matt.livejournal.com]

Aaah, sucks even more when you're in the boat because you were being proactive about finding a good deal and good interface rather than just leaving it where it is.

One of the reasons I moved a chunk of my money to them was that I had a pile of money (more than the compensation limit) sitting in one single UK savings account. The move to Icesave was just part of me splitting that up and moving it into a variety of different places, including rock solid safe places, savings accounts, and the stock market (which I count as a very long-term investment; we'll see how well my fund managers have fared when all the dust settles...)

So, while I may have temporarily lost some money, it looks like it'll come back, albeit sans some interest I could have been earning, and that's mostly because I was pro-active about doing exactly the right thing to cover my arse. So I don't feel too bad about my decisions. It does still shake you a bit when what you thought was your second-safest investment suddenly disappears overnight, though.

But I'd now like to join up with the "not spending much on Christmas presents" club even more than I did yesterday :)

[kaveypie.livejournal.com]

I don't think you should feel bad at all... you're probably in a minority of less than a % or 2 of Brits who take the time to research options and then make the effort to do what seems to be sensible. This is just pure bad luck. OK go sign up on my presents thread, might encourage more others to also do same.