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Choosing the right Student Account (2008/09)
Posted by David | Filed under Student Saving Tips
Home > Student Index > Choosing the right Student Account (2008/09)
There are loads of student accounts out there trying to entice you to do business with them. There main way of doing this is by throwing lots of freebies at you! The reason why banks market to students so much is that most people once they have a bank account remain loyal, and tend not to swap to get better deals as they graduate and then as they go into full time employment.
Below are two tables created for the main 2008/09 student accounts on offer, including the freebies and the more important information such as overdraft limit split per year of study.
Update: We now have a more up to date article Student Accounts 2009-2010.
It is important to also check with the bank you are going to chose what they think a student is! All the banks have their own definition, but if you go to University and are doing a Bachelor degree or a 5 year Medicine, Veterinary or Architecture course you will be fine as well.
| Bank | Unauthorised Overdraft (EAR) | Formal Overdraft Limit | ||||
| Â | Â | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5 |
| NatWest | 17.81% | £1250 | £1400 | £1600 | £1800 | £2000 |
| HSBC | 3% above their Base Rate. | £1000 | £1250 | £1500 | £1750 | £2000 |
| Barclays | 8.9% | £1000 | £1250 | £1500 | £1750 | £2000 |
| Abbey | 28.7% | £1000 | £1250 | £1500 | £1800 | £2000 |
| Royal Bank of Scotland | 29.84% | £2750 | £2750 | £2750 | £2750 | £2750 |
| Lloyds TSB* | 8.2% | £1500 | £1500 | £1500 | £2000 | £2000 |
| Co-operative Bank | 15.9% | £1400 | £1700 | £2000 | £2000 | £2000 |
| Halifax | 24.2% | £3000 | £3000 | £3000 | £3000 | £3000 |
*Lloyds TSB also offer an Islamic Students account at the same rates
It is strongly recommended you do not go above the overdraft limits of your account! Despite the numbers in the table above, many banks have stepped overdrafts which prevent you taking that sum at one time, usually its around £500 in the first six months and the remaining later in the year. Student accounts are not good for savers, if you are a saver consider an actual Savings Account as well as a student account.Â
Lloyds TSB student account offers a “Save the Pennies” type of scheme putting all the “change” you have left after a transaction into a savings account for you. HSBC are also doing a scheme of 6.00AER interest on actual credit for the first year of their student account as well. My advice though would be if you want to save go get a savings account with something higher than base rate interest! Online accounts often have much higher rates, but be careful how much you lock up your money.
While high overdraft looks great, check out the charges if you do go into the unauthorised territory. They can be steep and they can be painful. HSBC do have a fair charging policy, and Lloyds TSB will forgive you charge wise the first time you go overboard! While RBS looks like a great overdraft it does have a very high EAR if you go over.
Freebies Table (Don’t use this to judge who to go for though!)
| Bank | Notable Freebies |
| NatWest |
|
| HSBC |
|
| Barclays |
|
| Royal Bank of Scotland |
|
| Lloyds TSB |
|
Don’t go for a bank because it offers lots of freebies! Unless of course you are happy you won’t be going into the deep red, then you can consider taking advantage. In particular you may like the NatWest railcard deal and Lloyds TSB £100 cash deal. Many of the others are rather gimmicky voucher deals. Just because a bank isn’t offering freebies doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a good overdraft amount. Beware though banks will commit you to a certain amount of money and to a certain number of transcations to get these freebies!
My Recommendations
My recommendations would be the HSBC, Lloyds TSB and the NatWest accounts currently. Although the Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax offers look appealing. You will also find that HSBC and NatWest are likely to be one of the banks located in your student union making things more convenientfor you to pay in cheques etc. The young persons railcard in the case of NatWest makes it appealing especially if you use the train a lot.
Bank Websites can be confusing, reading through all the bank websites to get this information took quite some time, if you think I’ve made a mistake please get in touch.
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Tags: Barclays, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, NatWest, RBS, Student Account, Student Accounts, Student Bank Account, Student Bank Accounts, Student Current Accounts, Student Saving Tips
Building Your Own Computer (Part 5)
Posted by David | Filed under Hardware
Well its the final post on this now, and really today’s is not much about building computers at all! Just general suggestions of things you can get to support your new desktop!
Sound Systems
You can get speakers for as little as £20 these days, but they won’t be that amazing. If sound isn’t something you’re worried about then that’s fair enough but if you want the best then consider a THX set of speakers. When considering speaker systems you have to consider two things: what you can afford, and how much space you have! Sub-woofers can be huge! Especially with the bigger 7.1 and 5.1 systems. Think about your neighbours as well, a 500W system is not going to go down well if you live in a terrace house!
Personally I think I have a good compromise I get quality sound from my pair of 2.1 Z2300 Logitech THX speakers, the subwoofer is still pretty massive, but it all fits nicely in my room. The total cost for this is around £80, some may think that is alot for two speakers but when you hear the sound you realise it is worth it! They are a decent set of speakers including dust covers and tweeters – both a rarity in the modern speaker world!
What Else To Consider?
Well when you build your own computer you can decide everything! No longer are you stuck with the bundled cheapo mouse and keyboard, you can splash out on a stylish optical wireless mouse and keyboard, and why not get a decent WebCam as well?
One of the great things about building your own computer is you don’t have to ever finish building it! Even now I can still add new devices. Currently I want to purchase a Blu-ray drive, installing one in my machine will take less than 5 minutes! Card-Readers, Floppy Drives, special LCD and LED displays to display various stats are all the kind of thing you can add to your PC. Have a look through Ebuyer or whatever store you use to purchase your components and you’ll find all sorts of delightful accessories for your new computer. Don’t have enough RAM, well it won’t take more than 5 minutes to install more!
That is all when it comes to building your own computer for now, in the future I may go through certain processes in more detail but for now that is a quick overview which will hopefully give someone somewhere the confidence to go and build their own computer!
Good Luck to all those who take the risk!
Tags: Building Your Own Computer, Sound Systems
Setting Up Your Own Website (Part 2)
Posted by David | Filed under Web Design Tips
Yesterday I covered the first few stages of starting a website, up until buying hosting in Setting Up Your Own Website (Part 1). For this part I’m going to go back in time slightly, because really you should decide what software you are going to use before starting your website, but sometimes this is not always possible, and like me you change your mind as times change and your website progresses and gets larger.
Software
For most start up websites I would suggest using open source or free applications, the financial investment in your website is therefore minimal. This would be true for people starting up personal websites, blogs, non-profit websites etc. You may find that if your website becomes a success you can have paid adverts on your website, but then again you may chose that adverts are not the kind of thing for your site.
In previous posts I have made suggestions of software to use and these are worth a read:
- What Web Software? (Created 08/08/08)
- vBulletin vs phpBB (Created 08/08/08)
- Easy Form Generating Software (Created 10/08/08)
To summarise again, I would recommend WordPress for a Blog website and phpBB or vBulletin for a Discussion board. For solutions to other website ideas you can contact me using the comment system at the bottom of this page and I will try my best to come up with a solution (please say whether you are interested in open source or commercial applications).
Uploading Software
You will need to get software onto your web hosting before you can install it, its rather like you need to download a piece of software before you can install it on your PC only the reverse! For this you will need an FTP program such as CuteFTP, CoreFTP FileMozilla etc. There are many to choose from. Your host should have told you your FTP details when you signed up, but if not check in cPanelyou may have to create some yourself, if not contact your host and ask them! Uploading does take time, mainly due to the hundreds of files that are uploaded and relatively low upload speeds provided by ISPs! Once it’s all done you must follow any further instructions by the software, this may include changing permissions or CHMOD. Any good FTP program will understand the numbers supplied by the software for instructions on file permission.
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Setting Up Software
While I can’t tell you how to set up individual pieces of software, I can tell you that you will need to create a MYSQL database (for software I have suggested), if you have cPanel installed by your host this is quite easy to do, simply login and find the MYSQL database page, you will be presented with an option to create a database, type in a name and create a user to go with the database, and hey presto you have set up a MYSQL database. Remember to note down the details of your database, your username, your password and the host (usually localhost) as they will be of use when installing the software. cPanel can also help you setup subdomains such as newsub.yoursite.com instead of www.yoursite.com. cPanel can be quite hard to use at a first due to the huge amount of information present but reading the instruction manual and general cautious probing will help you quickly get used to using it.
How Much to Invest?
It really depends on how much money you have to risk when it comes to how much to invest. I would say that I would pay no more than £50 to start up a non-commercial or private/personal website such as my own. However expect to pay more for a commercial or business website investment. If I were to create a business website for a client it would cost them somewhere in the region of £200-500 depending on requirements so maybe that will give you an idea of how much to invest.
Worth Getting Paid Advertising?
For most people the short answer is no, its not worth it at all. The more content you write the more people will come to read your website you don’t need to pay. However if you are after a certain competitive market then perhaps you should consider something like Google Adsense. A well designed website, with ample content and search engine friendly will quickly reach its target audience without the help of Adsense or other advertising agencies. Be careful with paid advertising not to advertise on pages where you are number 1 or in the first 10 (search results)Â in Google, this is a complete waste of your money!
Getting Your Site into Google
I have already covered SEOing previously and I would recommend both my own articles on this subject, also not mentioned in these is advertising on forums, discussion boards, other people’s blogs, chatrooms, offline etc. The aim remember while doing this is to gain relevant useful visitors – you do not want people on a site about Buying Carpet who are actually interested in Free Screensavers or anything like that!
- Search Engine Optimization Tips (Created 08/08/08)
- The “Do Not’s” of SEOing (Created 08/08/08)
- Robots.txt (Created 08/08/08)
- Sitemaps (Created 09/08/08)
That is it for setting up your own website, I will create a third part soon featuring useful websites for webmasters, including nifty sites for making your life easier, collecting statistics etc.
Tags: Adsense, Getting into Google, Paid Advertising, Setting Up Your Own Website, What Web Software
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