Tips and tricks - 6% interest on savings, cashback and Apple Pay

For those who do not know yet, M&S start a current account which can give option of one savings account, limited at 250 pounds/monthly, for one year, with 6% interest. This is slightly better than TSB offer, which despite 5% interest and 250 pounds monthly, you can used only once, for one year. M&S one, you can make a new one after the older one is finished, every 12 months. It is not much, only 100 per year, but i like M&S, and i can use the debit card for cashback too.

I plan to use this on top of TSB one, having 250+250 in savings each month, one with 5%, one with 6%, as super secret emergency fund, just in case. If you need you can take the money right away. Of course, if you closed early, no interest for you and no savings account at preferential interest rate until the 12 months term is finished.

Speaking about banks, 5% cashback if i use Apple Pay for TSB and Santander, up to 100 pounds monthly. TSB use contactless card cashback 5% up to100 pounds too.

I hope it will help.

P.S. TSB and M&S current account are free, Santander is 2/month, going to 5/month in January 2016.

P.S.2 The IMF voted ‘yes’ to adding the Chinese currency to a VIP group of reserve currencies. A nice thing to follow up, but i will not invest in Chinese finance yet.

Companies that i start using on my early retirement plan

As i was asked with which companies i work on my plan, i will talk about them here.
As person to person lender i use ratesetter.com. Is very simple and intuitive to use it and what i like more is that you can make the process completely automatic. Set the direct debit, set what percentage under or over the interest level you want to lend the money and that's it. I tried to use wellesley.co.uk as they can add even the interest in this miraculous process of compounding. The only problem, or advantage, depending how you see it, is that you need to wait 30 days to move some money in your bank account.
As for online share dealing platform i use youinvest.com from AJ Bell. I tried share.com too but seems to be too tricky for me. On youinvest.com i can sort of automatize the process. Direct debit and automatically buy of shares every 10th of the month at £1.50 per transaction. But the inconvenient is that  i need to buy the mutual funds and trackers manually at £4.50 per transaction.
As for property crowdfunding i use propertymoose.co.uk. I also tried propertypartner.co but first one is more straightforward and is offering better rates than second one. Even if the minimum amount is £500 instead of £50 for propertypartner website.
As cash bank account i use TSB, because of the 5% interest for the first £2000.  They also have a saving account with 5% interest for 12 months.

This is what i use for the moment. I will update my plan again probably in December or January if is the case.