Cashing a cheque

rca779

I want to buy my wide a nice piece of jewellery for her 40th birthday next month and I don't want her to find out how much I paid for it.

The problem is we have joint bank accounts and a joint credit card.

The one option I can think of is to withdraw the money I need from an isa I have. I spoke to them today and it is not a problem, however they have to send me a cheque made payable to me.

Can I take this into a bank (with proof of ID) and simply cash this?
Do I need to use one of these cash converter, money shops to do this?

Help please

mrjam

If the cheque is from your own bank you can go into your own bank and cash it yes, although generally it would be made out to "cash" rather than yourself. As regards cash converters, you can only cash cheques in these places from a business and they telephone the business to make sure the cheque is from them (not sure if they will accept a cheque from a bank itself, but its a business so they should), otherwise if its a personal cheque you need a guarantee card. Hope this helps.

rca779

mrjam wrote: »

If the cheque is from your own bank you can go into your own bank and cash it yes, although generally it would be made out to "cash" rather than yourself.

Unfortunately I don;t know which bank the cheque will be from as it is sent from my isa provider (Aberdeen).

Can anyone else suggest a way of getting hold of cash without my wife finding out (all sounds very underhand but it is for all the right reasons;) and it is not because I am being a cheapstake in fact it is the opposite!)

jonesMUFCforever

There is no such thing as a joint credit card.
If its your card and she is down as an additional cardholder then the statement will come to you.

You would be foolish IMO to use cheque converter - you lose money for no good reason.
Why not just make small cash withdrawals from time to time for amounts that will not stand out too much until you have the amount that you want?

LittleVoice

In my household it is the husband who has the additional card and this may be the same for the OP.

A pawnbroker could provide cash and you would just need, over time, to syphon off enough to redeem the item. However this too would involve a payment in addition to the pawnbroker.

Mikeyorks

rca779 wrote: »

Can I take this into a bank (with proof of ID) and simply cash this?

No - you can't do that as the cheque will be crossed, so you have to pay it into an account containing the name of the payee.

You're safer dealing with your wife than a cash converter. The former is hopefully both friendlier and cheaper (in the nicest way;) ).

Stick it on the CC ....... otherwise she'll think she's part of Love Actually (where Rowan Atkinson wraps the illicit present for the other woman).

benjus

If you have enough time, you could always open a basic bank account (no impact on your credit rating) in your name only... if you apply online you could potentially have it all set up in a week, plus another week for the cheque to clear, and you've got the money. I recently opened a Halifax Easycash account (purely for buying Ryanair flights) and received my card about a week after submitting the application.

nzseries1

rca779 wrote: »

I want to buy my wide a nice piece of jewellery for her 40th birthday

I hope that the piece of jewellery is nice enough to make up for you calling your other half a "wide"!