How renters can make money from their banks

As a renter, your budget is unlikely to change. This section focuses on money tips that increase your cash flow. Life admin is the worst, however with simple switches you could be making free money. We’ve collated the options that each only take a maximum of 5 minutes of your time, and could save you hundred of pounds.

It’s awful, I know, but by picking up the phone or emailing you can save money. Let’s make it easy by running through the simple switches that will take less than 5 minutes.

Change Bank Accounts

It’s easier to switch banks with the Current Account Switching Service. With this, your new bank will switch your Direct Debits and transfer your balance, and your old bank will take care of closing your old account. Meaning no work from you apart from letting them know you want to switch.

As of October 2020, the following banks are offering bonuses for switching (in alphabetical order)*:

If you want to give your bank a chance, call them and ask if they will match any of the cash or vouchers, or suspend monthly costs for a period of time.

Retrace forgotten accounts

There is over £300m in forgotten UK accounts. Even if you think you’ve kept track of all your money, it’s worth checking.

You can find out more by using My Lost Account. It’s a free service to check if you have any unclosed bank or savings accounts and reclaim your money.

Get cashback on your debit card

If you are using your debit card, you could be getting up to 15% cashback which includes online purchases. Particularly if you set up your household bills to be directly debited from your account.

Why do you get this cash back from the bank? Your bank offers a discount to the retailer and credits the cashback amount to your bank account. It also gets them assured ongoing transactions, which is why they can give the discount directly to you.

You may need to activate cashback through online or mobile banking. The following offer debit cashbacks but check with your bank*:

*All information is correct at the time of posting (29 October 2020).

This is the third part of our “Save renters money” series. If you’re working from home more, read our first part here.

Want to know how you can move into your dream property? To check out the Fronted Deposit here.