Northern Rock was a bit of wake up call for the banking world and also for those of you with savings!
Whilst some of you made the rational decision to keep your money in Northern Rock, others amongst you decided to play safe and take your money out.
So, if that was you, where should you put your savings now?
A good question indeed and here are a few suggestions that we hope might prove useful:
A pretty obvious place to start would be National Savings and Investments:
National Savings has products such as the Easy Access savings account which has proved massively popular post Northern Rock crisis. It also has index linked savings certificates and income bonds.
Because it's the Government savings bank, it doesn't really offer any high risk/high return products, but many people are now looking beyond that and seeing the safety that it offers!
Their products are 100% secure seeing as their investments are backed by HM Treasury (which we hope is unlikely to go bust!) and this is clearly proving popular as over £65 million of savings have been deposited with them since Northern Rock went a bit wonky!
Despite not having great interest rates, their Easy Access Savings Account does exactly what it says.
Its is an instant access account with a cash card that allows you to pay money in at post offices and take money out at ATMs. You can open it with £100 and has interest rates of 2.6% for £100-£999 and 5.15% for £50,000 or more.
They also have fixed rate savings bonds where you have to commit your cash for 1, 3 or 5 years.
The 1 year bond pays interest at 5.2% from £500, rising to 5.35% at £20,000 and 5.55% at £50,000. The 3 year bond starts at 5.25% and the 5 year bond at 5.05%.
Though these seem good, there are better bonds available from other lenders that pay more interest as you can see:
It's also worth looking at
NS&I's Direct ISA which is 6.3% but you do have to deposit a minimum of £1,000.
You should also consider putting your savings into one of the big High Street banks.
No really, this is not as daft as it sounds right now!
If you do put your savings into one of them, you are every unlikely to lose your money if one of them collapses. This is because there is a strong presumption that the Government won't allow a situation like Barclays or HSBC to go under.
So, what are the big banks offering you are a saver?
Abbey is paying 7.25% and Halifax 7% so long as you pay in a regular amount of money and the maximum deposit is £3,000.
You should also be fairly safe with Building Societies so you might want to check out these savings accounts:
"Goldfinger...he's the man, the man with the midas touch"Ok, so you might not love gold that much but if you want to save your money wisely then gold is a pretty good bet investment right now!
Why? Because it will survive any banking crash!
However it does not pay interest, you have to pay transaction fees when you sell and its price goes up and down frequently! (In the last few weeks, the price has gone from $660 an ounce to $725)
The starting price for a gold bar is currently £39.25 for a bar weighing 2.5 grams but real investors start with a bar weighing 1kg and that will cost you a tidy £12,000!
You should also consider buying gold coins such as Krugerrands (1oz for £381.50) or sovereigns (the QE2 2007 version sells for £111.)
Of course you could always stuff it under the mattress?
A bit old skool and tempting for some of you, but very definitely not recommended!
If you stash your cash at home and it's stolen by burglars, or a fire or flood destroys it then unlucky; your insurance won't cover you!
You could of course buy yourself a safe but the small 4 digit safe that can be bought in Argos for example wouldn't deter a trained monkey so it best to avoid.
Online retailer www.safeoptions.co.uk says there are 2 types of safe: fire proof ones for documents and certificates and security safes for cash and jewellery.
The industry grades safes according to insurance bands running from £1,000 to £150,000.
A £1,000 safe is supposedly secure for £1,000 of cash and £10,000 of jewellery while a £5,000 safe covers you for the same amount of cash and £50,000 of jewellery.
Safeoptions recommends the Burton Torino safe which sells for £269. It topped the Which? best buy tables as the most secure it tested.
So, Northern Rock may have crumbled a bit in the last couple of weeks but as you can see, there are a few ways and places to save your hard earned money that might give you more peace of mind!