Hi, I'm a university student in England. Due to having a low family income, and going to a rather prestigious university, I'm getting a fair amount of non-repayable money in the form of grants and bursaries and whatnot. I'm still getting the standard student loans, and the maintenance loan from the government. These I have to repay, but they only need repaying when I have a job above ~£16,000/year.
I do my best to subscribe to the Mustachian methods, so overall I'm left with a lot of money that I'm just not spending. So far I've tucked this into Cash ISAs.
I have an ISA with Halifax, which is on a 3 year fixed rate from now on at 4%. Due to some silliness when I first got that, I have ~£4,900 in there and can't put any more in (I took some money out to lend to my brother, not realising I couldn't put that back in after reaching the limit).
I also have a variable rate ISA with Santander that will be 3.3% for the year with £3,500 in it at the moment. I'm putting money into this as fast as I can, while making sure I'll not run out of money at any point (I have a £1,000 overdraft in my student account, which I put a fair bit into my variable savings, since it's just free money, and at the end of my degree I will just cut back on the money I put into savings to make sure I'm not in the overdraft when the student overdraft expires).
When my 2nd year at university begins again, I'll start to have more bursaries and grants, along with my loans, coming in. I'll quite quickly fill up my variable ISA. At this point I'll have money left over, that will just be doing nothing at all in my student account.
I'd like to figure out what to do with this money that will have it work for me, rather than lying on the sofa doing nothing.
A question I'm not sure of: At the end of the tax year, can I transfer my variable rate ISA into my existing halifax fixed ISA, at the 4%? So if I fill it up, add the £5,640 to the existing £4,900, and then keep that in for the remaining years?
I'd like to have all of this money available to me for use upon leaving university, which will be in June 2015. I looked at one point into a stocks and shares ISA at Santander, but they told me that if I couldn't leave the money with them for 4 years or more, it wasn't worth it for me to get one.
I'd appreciate any advice! Thankyou!