It’s time to be more careful about money so I decided last week to look into opening a savings account with transactional capability. My needs are simple: a card to draw money from ATMs and to transact at retailers, internet banking and the best possible rate of interest on the money in my account. I recalled an article in the Sunday Times a few months ago that rated Sanlam Liquid as the best savings account so that seemed a good one to use as the benchmark. I also remembered that there is a list of comparison sites on the getclosure! website. Sure enough, two of them looked promising: www.justmoney.co.za and www.thinkmoney.co.za. Justmoney turned out to be incredibly easy to use – a wonderful site that I will definitely use again – but no mention of Sanlam Liquid! So off to thinkmoney – another impressive and user-friendly site and this time, Sanlam Liquid featured prominently. I used thinkmoney to establish that Sanlam Liquid had what I wanted – a debit card, internet banking and one of the best rates of interest, 10.46% pa – and that it had some positive recommendations from its account holders. My next site to visit was Sanlam Liquid itself and two pleasant surprises awaited me: the application form was short and simple and the interest rate was much better than thinkmoney indicated – a whopping 11.10% pa nominal (11.68% effective). More good news was to follow – my Sanlam Liquid account was activated and my debit card was delivered by courier just 4 days later!

Ian is one of the people who dreamed up getclosure! He has a background in dispute resolution and financial services. Click here to read more Ian and other members of  the getclosure! team.