How many accounts?

LICAPICA

I have only two accounts (electron and current) and no credit cards atm.

I would like to take control of my finances and have everything coming out of different accounts so I can keep better track of things.

I thought I would do this by having

• direct debits inc motgage/gas/insurances coming out of OH's account
• Food/council tax/eating out from the electron card
• save monthly, pay yearly (christmas/insurance/car tax)in another account (current)

Should I be splitting it down further?
Should I get rid of the electron?
Should I hold accounts with different banks or all the same one?

Thanks

genieuk

Thats a bit along the lines of what OH and I did before we got married we had our own bank accounts and set up a standing order into a joint account for rent and utility bills etc and what we had left was for spends.

Sounds good, up to personal choice whether to keep all accounts under one roof or spread them around look for ones that have good rates and incentives for now. Your save for monthly/yearly look at instant access savings rates.

Someone here will know and be able to explain better about all the different accounts like A & L or such like.

Lokolo

Thats good idea. Thats what most people on here do anyway.

Electron isn't as widely used as normal Visa debit cards. Its really upto you, if its fine for what you do at the moment I highly doubt they will soon change things.

Who are the accounts with? And do you use Internet Banking?

halight

I have three bank accounts. 2 with the same and one eith one other.
You can have as many accounts as you would like/need. And you can have these with who ever you wont to have them with

halight

sorry one last thing. The account that you wont for your yearly payment should be one with a good intrset rate as you will be leaving money in there for a long time. You could always go for a saving account for this and trasfer the money over into the account you wont to pay out of when you need to pay the bill

jack*tigger

The other thing to consider is a reward / cashback credit card. I have a Nectar AMEX card and buy everything I can on that instead of my debit card. We are Sainsburys shoppers so we get double nectar points. But look at the other cards that give you cash especially if you're not a Sainsburys shopper.

My current account is with LLoydsTSB and I have some associated internet savings accounts. So I can move money around as I like. All monthly bills are paid by DD and I put a little aside each month for annual bills, kids savings, holiday fund etc. All the accounts are offset against the mortgage so the money is working hard !

benjus

If you ever fly with Ryanair it's worth keeping the Electron account just for that.

justsayyes

benjus wrote: »

If you ever fly with Ryanair it's worth keeping the Electron account just for that.

Erm..... Pourquoi?

olly300

justsayyes wrote: »

Erm..... Pourquoi?

Ryanair charge a transaction charge of £4 per person for any other card.

agsnu

It's true - Ryanair cynically market fares much lower than they should, on the grounds that 90% or so of the population don't have an Electron card. So 90% of the population have to pay approx. £8 each over and above the advertised price to fly with Ryanair (I believe it's £4 per person per flight, and outbound/return counts as 2 flights) - even if they use another debit card (the cost to Ryanair of which is exactly the same as processing Electron cards, at about 10-20p per transaction).

Although they are now forbidden them from hiding taxes & charges from the displayed fares, there is nothing to stop them doing this. They will claim that it is possible to obtain the displayed price, but in practice for most people it is very difficult to do so - hardly worth obtaining another account just so you can save a few bob on Ryanair.

benjus

agsnu wrote: »

hardly worth obtaining another account just so you can save a few bob on Ryanair.

A lot of people on this site (myself included) have done exactly that. If you fly frequently with Ryanair you are better off having an Electron account than a high interest current account (of course there's nothing to stop you having both). It only took me 5 minutes to fill out an online form, and I got my Electron card about a week later...

Anyway, I didn't mean to threadjack - just thought it was worth mentioning.